THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


IN  MEMORY  OF 

PROFESSOR 
EUGENE  I.  McCORMAC 


4 


£/ 


d  tat.    ITT 


LIFE 


DANIEL   "WEBSTEK 


BY 

GEOKGE    TICKNOK    CUKTIS, 

ONB   OF   HIS    LITERABY    EXECUTOBS. 


VOLUME    I. 


NEW    YORK: 
D.     APPLETON     AND      COMPANY, 

90,    92    &    94    GRAND    STREET. 

1870. 


ENTEBED,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1869,  by 

GEOKGE  TICKNOB  CURTIS, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the 
Southern  District  of  New  York. 


PREFACE. 


WEBSTEK,  who  died  on  the  24th  of  October,  1852, 
made  the  following  provision  in  his  will,  which  he 
executed  a  few  days  before  his  death : 

"  I  appoint  Edward  Everett,  George  Ticknor,  Cornelius. 
Conway  Felton,  and  George  Ticknor  Curtis,  to  be  my  literary 
executors  ;  and  I  direct  my  son,  Fletcher  Webster,  to  seal 
up  all  my  letters,  manuscripts,  and  papers,  and,  at  a  proper 
time,  to  select  those  relating  to  my  personal  history  and  my 
professional  and  public  life,  which,  in  his  judgment,  should 
be  placed  at  their  disposal,  and  to  transfer  the  same  to 
them,  to  be  used  by  them  in  such  manner  as  they  may  think 
fit.  They  may  receive  valuable  aid  from  my  friend  George 
J.  Abbott,  Esq.,  now  of  the  State  Department." 

After  the  probate  of  the  will,  Mr.  Fletcher  Webster 
transferred  to  the  literary  executors  all  the  papers  which 
were  supposed  to  be  embraced  within  the  purpose  of  this 
provision ;  and  steps  were  taken  to  collect  from  other  sources 
whatever  else  might  be  in  existence  which  would  be  impor 
tant  to  the  preparation  of  a  Life  of  Mr.  Webster.  The 


iv  PREFACE. 

result  was  the  accumulation  of  a  large  mass  of  papers,  and 
documents  of  a  very  important  character,  among  which  were 
a  number  of  exceedingly  interesting  reminiscences  in  MS., 
furnished  by  the  surviving  few  who  had  known  Mr.  "Webster 
from  his  youth.  Great  pains  were  taken  in  collecting  these 
materials,  which  were  chiefly  gathered  by  Mr.  Ticknor,  acting 
for  his  associates  in  the  literary  executorship.  The  whole  of 
these  collections,  with  the  exception  of  those  which  belonged 
to  Mr.  Ticknor's  personal  relations  with  Mr.  Webster,  were 
then  passed  over  to  Mr.  Everett,  with  the  full  understanding, 
however,  that  every  thing  else  would  be  at  his  service  when 
ever  he  should  think  it  proper  to  undertake  the  writing  of  a 
Life  of  Mr.  "Webster. 

As  I  was  the  draughtsman  of  Mr.  Webster's  will,  and  as 
he  conversed  freely  with  me  respecting  all  of  its  provisions, 
I  may  mention  what  occurred  in  reference  to  this  literary 
executorship.  After  naming  Mr.  Everett  and  Mr.  Ticknor 
as  the  friends  whom  he  most  desired  to  place  in  this  rela 
tion,  he  dictated  to  me  the  substance  of  the  clause  as  it 
now  stands.  When  it  had  been  written  down,  he  added, 
after  a  short  pause  :  "  Put  in  also  Professor  Feiton's  name 
and  your  own ;  it  is  the  only  way  I  have  to  mark  my  affec 
tion  for  him  and  for  you,  and  four  will  be  as  good  as  two." 
When  I  assented  to  this  addition  of  my  own  name,  there 
seemed  to  me  scarcely  a  remote  possibility  that  it  would 
fall  to  me  to  perform  the  office  which  was  evidently  in  Mr. 
Webster's  contemplation  in  making  this  provision ;  and,  when 
the  will  had  taken  effect,  and  for  years  afterward,  it  was 
always  tacitly  assumed  among  us  that  Mr.  Everett  would, 
at  some  period,  be  the  person  on  whom  that  office  would  de 
volve.  But  Mr.  Everett  did  nothing,  I  believe,  after  this  time, 
toward  the  preparation  of  a  full  Life  of  Mr.  Webster.  Nothing, 
at  least,  was  found,  after  his  own  lamented  death,  to  show 


PREFACE.  v 

that  lie  had  begun  to  write  one.  His  numerous  avocations, 
public  and  private,  and  perhaps  a  continuing  doubt  whether 
the  period  had  arrived  when  a  Life  of  Mr.  "Webster  could 
be  judiciously  undertaken,  led  him  to  postpone  a  task  for 
which  he  was  eminently  fitted,  which  his  associates  in  the 
literary  executorship  were  always  unanimously  anxious  to 
have  him  assume,  and  for  which  they  were  eager  to  afford 
him  all  the  aid  in  their  power.  It  should  not  be  forgotten, 
however,  that  one  part,  of  what  may  be  considered  his  duty 
to  his  illustrious  friend,  had  been  already  performed  by  him, 
with  all  the  diligence  and  devotion  of  his  own  time  to  the 
concerns  of  others  that  marked  his  character.  In  1851, 
when  filling  the  very  laborious  and  responsible  office  of 
President  of  Harvard  College,  Mr.  Everett  had  edited  a  full 
collection  of  Mr.  Webster's  "Works,  to  which  he  prefixed 
a  beautiful  and  carefully-written  biographical  memoir.  At 
a  later  period,  he  sanctioned  the  publication,  in  1857,  by 
Mr.  Fletcher  "Webster,  of  two  volumes  of  Mr.  Webster's  Cor 
respondence,  and  partly  assisted  in  carrying  them  through 
the  press.  In  the  preface  to  that  publication,  it  was  sug 
gested  that  the  letters  embraced  in  it  would  be  of  value  as  a 
collection  of  materials  for  a  Biography  of  Mr.  Webster, 
when  the  time  should  arrive  for  the  composition  of  such 
a  work. 

Mr.  Felton,  who  in  1860  became  President  of  Harvard 
College,  died  on  the  26th  of  February,  1862,  mourned  by 
the  lovers  of  learning  in  our  own  country,  and  by  not  a 
few  in  foreign  lands.  The  death  of  Mr.  Everett,  in  1865, 
occurring  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  unofficial  and  voluntary 
patriotic  labors  during  our  great  civil  war,  revealed  to  Mr. 
Ticknor  and  myself  the  necessity  for  an  immediate  atten 
tion  to  the  implied  injunctions  of  Mr.  Webster's  will.  I 
scarcely  need  to  say — I  shall  be  credited  where  we  are  both 


yj  PREFACE. 

known — that,  if  my  kinsman  had  consented  to  undertake 
the  office  which  one  of  us  had  thus  become  bound  to  dis 
charge,  my  own  gratification  would  have  been  proportion 
ate  to  what  must  now  be  my  regret.  But  his  decision  was 
made  with  the  promptness  with  which  he  decides  all  ques 
tions  of  duty ;  and  thus  was  devolved  upon  me  the  per 
formance  of  a  labor  for  which  three  persons  had  been  named 
before  me.  As  soon  as  this  arrangement  was  definitely  con 
cluded,  in  the  winter  of  1865-'66,  all  the  papers  were  for 
warded  to  me  by  Mr.  Ticknor,  and  I  commenced  the  follow 
ing  work.  It  has  been  prosecuted  with  such  diligence  as  the 
cares  of  an  engrossing  profession  have  allowed  me  to  bestow 
upon  it. 

My  own  opinion  was,  that  the  time  had  arrived  both 
for  writing  and  publishing  a  Life  of  Mr.  Webster.  For  writ 
ing  it  the  time  had  certainly  arrived,  if  there  was  any  one 
who,  possessing  the  requisite  knowledge  of  Mr.  "Webster's 
history,  and  having  enjoyed  his  confidence,  might  be  able  to 
undergo  the  labor.  In  some  of  the  necessary  qualifications  I 
could  not  regard  myself  as  entirely  wanting,  however  deficient 
I  might  be  in  others.  I  had  known  Mr.  Webster  intimately  for 
many  years,  during  that  period  of  his  life  when  he  was  the 
most  communicative  to  those  in  whom  he  placed  confi 
dence.  I  had  lived  from  my  youth  in  close  association  with 
his  nearest  friends,  in  Boston,  and  I  could  easily  have 
access  to  others  who  were  much  trusted  and  loved  by  him, 
in  this  city,  and  who  could  give  me  their  aid  and  counsel. 
Finally,  he  had,  in  his  last  moments,  marked  his  affection 
for  me  in  the  strongest  manner,  by  many  other  acts  besides 
that  of  placing  me  on  the  list  of  those  with  whom  he  meant 
to  leave  the  care  of  his  name  and  fame.  Ten  years  had 
passed  since  his  death,  and  his  eldest  son,  long  the  survivor 
of  all  his  children,  had  fallen  on  the  field  of  battle,  defend- 


PREFACE.  vii 

ing,  in  arms,  that  Government  and  Constitution  which  the 
father  had,  with  so  much  renown,  defended  in  the  Senate, 
in  the  Cabinet,  and  in  the  Forum.  It  did  not  seem  to  me 
that  I  could  properly  hesitate  to  undertake,  at  whatever 
sacrifice  or  risk,  the  duty  that  had  been  thus  unexpectedly 
cast  upon  me. 

Nor  does  it  seem  to  me,  now  that  this  work  has  been 
written,  that  there  ought  to  be  delay  in  its  publication. 
Nearly  seventeen  years  have  elapsed  since  Mr.  "Webster's  death. 
If  all  who  acted  with  him  in  public  affairs  have  not  yet 
passed  away,  there  has  occurred  in  this  country,  since  his 
decease,  one  of  those  catastrophes  which  make  a  wide  chasm 
in  the  history  of  a  nation,  and  which  separate  periods  not 
actually  remote  from  each  other,  as  if  a  century  had  inter 
vened.  Mr.  "Webster's  life  ended  as  the  era  of  patriotic 
efforts  to  avert  from  our  country  the  disasters  of  internal 
conflict  and  civil  war  was  about  to  close,  and  when  such 
efforts  were  about  to  prove  of  no  avail.  To  that  era  he 
belongs,  and  in  it  he  stands  a  grand  historical  figure,  tow 
ard  whom  the  eyes  of  men  will  be  more  and  more  directed 
as  they  contemplate  what  was  done  to  deepen  the  founda 
tions  of  our  constitutional  Republic  by  those  who  received 
it  from  its  immediate  founders.  We  cannot  too  often  revert 
to  the  study  of  their  principles,  the  recollection  of  their  meas 
ures,  and  the  appreciation  of  their  services.  Above  all,  we 
cannot  too  soon  seek  to  do  justice  to  the  memory  of  a  great 
man,  who  for  nearly  forty  years  was  one  of  the  most  con 
spicuous  of  our  statesmen  ;  and  whose  intellect,  by  the  admis 
sion  of  all,  impressed  itself  upon  the  age  in  which  he  lived 
with  an  influence  inferior  to  that  of  none  of  his  countrymen, 
and  to  that  of  very  few  of  his  contemporaries  in  any  portion 
of  the  globe. 

It  is  not  alone,  however,  because  Mr.  "Webster  was  a  great 


viii  PREFACE. 

statesman,  that  a  life  of  him  may  be  important  or  interest 
ing.  He  had  the  singular  and  rare  fortune  to  be  as  eminent 
in  the  profession  of  the  law  as  he  was  in  the  capacity  of 
a  statesman.  Through  his  whole  life,  these  two  functions, 
seldom  united  to  a  high  degree  in  the  same  person,  were  dis 
played  in  constant  activity,  and  each  was  constantly  adding 
to  his  reputation,  and  increasing  his  influence. 

But  when  this  has  been  said  of  Mr.  Webster,  all  that 
made  up  his  public  character  and  renown  has  not  been  said. 
For,  as  if  to  complete  the  compass  of  his  extraordinary  en 
dowments,  he  was  an  orator  in  the  sense  in  which  Demos 
thenes,  Cicero,  Chatham,  and  Burke,  were  orators. 

If  to  enlighten,  instruct,  and  elevate  popular  assemblies 
or  public  bodies  by  spoken  discourse,  that  becomes  part  of 
the  literature,  and  is  indestructibly  associated  with  the  lan 
guage  of  a  people — if,  to  create  those  masterpieces  of  speech 
which  are  preserved  by  diction,  eloquence,  reasoning,  and 
thought,  that  men  will  not  "  willingly  let  die  " — if  this  con 
stitutes  oratory,  Mr.  Webster  stands,  by  the  judgment  of 
mankind,  among  those  who  have  wielded  this  great  power 
in  ancient  or  in  modern  times.  What  he  was,  however,  as 
an  orator,  as  a  lawyer,  and  as  a  statesman,  would  fail  to  be 
an  adequate  portrayal  of  him,  if  it  were  not  accompanied 
by  some  delineation  of  what  he  was  as  a  man.  His  great 
intellectual  endowments  and  conspicuous  civil  functions  were 
united  with  a  character  of  equally  marked  peculiarities,  and 
his  private  life  was  as  full  and  capacious  as  that  which  was 
known  to  the  public ;  and  it  is  that  which  is  the  most  vividly 
and  fondly  remembered  by  those  who  were  intimately  asso 
ciated  with  him. 

If  our  literature  were  to  remain  without  a  suitable  biog 
raphy  of  such  a  man  until  all  those  who  had  known  him 
have  ceased  to  be  able  to  attest  and  to  describe  him  as  he 


PREFACE.  ix 

was,  it  would  be  marked  by  a  void  which  some  future  gen 
eration  might  undertake  to  fill  without  the  fall  means  of 
doing  justice  to  him  and  to  his  relation  to  his  times.  In 
this  department  of  letters,  it  is  possible  that  something  is 
gained  by  the  absence  of  any  personal  connection  between 
the  biographer  and  his  subject ;  but  it  is  also  certain  that 
much  is  lost  when  the  greater  impartiality  of  the  writer  is 
necessarily  accompanied  by  an  inferior  knowledge  of  those 
motives  of  action,  those  principles  of  conduct,  and  those 
traits  of  character  which  constitute  the  essential  individu 
ality  of  him  who  is  to  be  described.  The  world  is  generally 
agreed  that  lives  of  distinguished  men,  which  are  written 
by  those  who  fulfil  in  them  an  office  of  friendship,  even  if 
they  are  to  be  taken  with  some  allowance,  possess  a  balance 
of  advantages.  To  the  criticism,  which  embraces  this  gen 
eral  principle,  I  do  not  fear  to  trust  myself  in  all  that  I 
have  said  concerning  Mr.  Webster.  No  tie  of  kindred  ex 
isted  between  him  and  myself;  and  I  am  not  conscious  of 
the  presumption  of  supposing  that  I  can  gain  or  lose  by 
the  judgments  that  may  be  formed  respecting  any  portion  of 
his  career,  any  act  of  his  life,  or  any  feature  of  his  char 
acter.  At  the  same  time,  it  would  be  an  affectation,  if  I 
were  not  to  avow  that  the  writing  of  this  work  has  been 
with  me  a  labor  of  love. 

In  its  prosecution,  I  have  had  the  benefit  of  a  thorough 
revision  of  what  I  have  written  by  Mr.  Ticknor,  whose  in 
terest  both  in  the  subject  and  in  the  writer  has  been  with 
him  a  double  motive  for  the  attention  he  has  bestowed  upon 
my  work.  All  who  kno\\r  the  strength  of  his  memory,  the 
soundness  of  his  judgment,  and  the  severity  of  his  taste, 
will  appreciate,  as  I  do,  the  advantage  I  have  derived  from 
his  assistance.  No  part,  however,  of  this  work,  it  should 
be  understood,  has  proceeded  from  his  pen,  excepting  the 


x  PREFACE. 

passages  which  are  expressly  quoted  from  his  reminiscences, 
which  were  written  immediately  after  Mr.  "Webster's  death, 
in  1852,  but  have  been  hitherto  unpublished. 

My  thanks  are  also  due  to  the  Hon.  R.  M.  Blatchford, 
the  Hon.  Hiram  Ketchum,  and  Charles  A.  Stetson,  Esq., 
of  this  city;  and  to  the  Hon.  Peter  Harvey  and  Franklin 
Haven,  Esq.,  of  Boston — all  dear  and  cherished  friends  of 
Mr.  "Webster — for  the  communication  of  important  materials 
and  information. 

The  Hight  Hon.  John  Evelyn  Denison,  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  one  of  Mr.  "Webster's  English  friends, 
with  whom  he  most  frequently  corresponded,  has  kindly 
placed  at  my  disposal  the  letters  which  passed  between  them. 

To  George  J.  Abbott,  Esq.,  formerly  of  the  State  De 
partment,  and  now  United  States  Consul  at  Sheffield,  Eng 
land — who  acted  for  a  long  time  as  Mr.  "Webster's  private 
secretary,  and  was  with  him  at  Marshfield  at  the  time  of 
his  death,  who  enjoyed  Mr.  "Webster's  full  confidence,  and 
was  much  beloved  by  him — I  have  to  express  the  cordial 
thanks  of  the  surviving  literary  executors  for  the  services 
anticipated  in  the  reference  to  him  made  in  Mr.  "Webster's 
will. 

Although  some  of  the  letters  which  are  embraced  in  this 
work  have  been  in  print  since  the  year  1857,  and  a  few  of 
them  had  been  published  previously,  their  use,  in  the  con 
nection  in  which  they  are  here  found,  was  essential  to  the 
development  of  Mr.  "Webster's  history,  and  the  illustration  of 
his  character.  A  great  many  others  of  Mr.  Webster's  letters 
are  now  published  for  the  first  time. 

The  portrait,  which  has  been  engraved  for  the  first  vol 
ume  of  this  work,  was  painted  by  Healy,  soon  after  the 
negotiation  of  the  Treaty  of  "Washington.  Mr.  "Webster  was 
painted  many  times,  at  different  periods  of  his  life,  by  other 


PEEFACE.  xj 


artists,  but  by  no  one  better  than  by  Mr.  Healy,  to  whom 
he  sat  several  times.  The  picture,  of  which  I  have  made 
use,  was  kindly  lent  for  the  purpose  by  Mr.  Blatchford. 

The  various  illustrations,  in  woodcut,  contained  in  the 
body  of  the  work,  are  from  photographic  views  taken  ex 
pressly  for  this  purpose.  They  embrace  "  Elms  Farm,"  and 
the  burial-place  of  the  "Webster  family,  at  Franklin,  New 
Hampshire  ;  Mr.  "Webster's  house,  in  Summer  Street,  Bos 
ton  ;  the  "  Green  Harbor "  estate,  at  Marshfield  ;  and  the 
monuments  erected  at  the  tomb  in  which  lie  the  remains 
of  Mr.  "Webster,  Mrs.  Grace  Webster,  and  their  children. 

Mrs.  Caroline  Le  Roy  "Webster,  after  the  death  of  her 
husband,  transferred  to  the  trustees,  under  Mr.  "Webster's  will, 
her  interest  in  the  estate  at  Marshfield,  and  came  to  reside 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  where  she  still  survives,  surrounded 
by  the  respect  and  interest  of  a  large  circle  of  friends. 

NEW  YORK,  Sept.,  1869. 


CONTENTS   OF  VOLUME   I. 


CHAPTER    I. 

1782-1797. 
Birth  and  Parentage— Boyhood— Early  Education— Enters  Dartmouth  College,  1-25 

CHAPTER    II. 

1797-1801. 
College  Life— Rank  as  a  Student— Development  and  Acquisition     .        .        26-46 

CHAPTER    III. 

1801-1807. 

Begins  the  Study  of  the  Law  in  Salisbury — Teaches  a  School  in  Maine — Enters  the 
Office  of  Mr.  Gore,  in  Boston — Admission  to  the  Bar — Refuses  a  Lucrative  Office 
— Practises  in  Boscawen — Death  of  his  Father — Removal  to  Portsmouth  47-80 

CHAPTER    IV. 

1807-1813. 

Removal  to  Portsmouth — Marriage — The  Buckminsters — Mr.  Jeremiah  Mason — 
Birth  of  a  Daughter— The  Embargo— Phi  Beta  Kappa  Oration— War  of  1812 
— The  English  and  French  Decrees — Rockingham  Memorial — Election  to  Con 
gress — Resolutions  on  the  alleged  Repeal  of  the  French  Decrees  .  81-114 

CHAPTER    V. 

1813-1814. 

Mr.  Webster's  Life  at  Portsmouth — Birth  of  Daniel  Fletcher — Great  Fire  in  the 
Town — Congress  of  1813-'14 — Resolutions  on  French  Decrees — Military  Trials 
for  Treason — Encouragement  of  Enlistments — Modification  of  the  Embargo — 
Repeal  of  the  Restrictive  System — Domestic  Manufactures — Practice  in  Su 
preme  Court — Returns  Home 115-132 

CHAPTER    VI. 

1814-1815. 

Extraordinary  Session  of  Congress — Burning  of  the  Capitol  by  the  English — Peace 
Negotiations — The  Hartford  Convention — A  Land  Tax — Conscription — Attempt 
to  create  a  National  Bank  133-145 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    VII. 

1815-1816. 

Fourteenth  Congress — National  Bank — Specie  Resolutions — Tariff  of  1816 — Death 
of  Mr.  Webster's  Mother — Challenged  by  Mr.  Randolph — Returns  from  Congress 
— Removal  to  Boston 146-156 

CHAPTER    VIII. 

1816-1819. 

Congress  in  1816-'17— Death  of  Little  Grace— Retires  from  Public  Life— Birth  of 
his  Daughter  Julia — Position  at  the  Boston  Bar — Social  Life — Dartmouth  Col 
lege  Case— Robbery  of  Major  Goodridge  157-175 

CHAPTER    IX. 

1820-1822. 

Mr.  Calhoun's  Visit  to  Boston — Professional  Position — Convention  to  Revise  the 
Constitution  of  Massachusetts — The  Plymouth  Oration — Case  of  La  Jeune 
Eugenie — Defence  of  Judge  James  Prescott — Elected  to  Congress  from  Bos 
ton  176-198 

CHAPTER    X. 

1823-1824. 

Reenters  Congress — Speech  on  the  Greek  Revolution — Tariff  of  1824 — Proposed 
Changes  in  the  Judicial  System — The  Case  of  Gibbons  vs.  Ogden — Candidacy 
of  Mr.  John  Quincy  Adams — First  Visit  to  Marshfield — Reflected  to  Con 
gress  199-221 

CHAPTER    XI. 

1824-1825. 

Visit  to  Mr.  Jefferson  and  Mr.  Madison — Death  of  his  Son  Charles — Election  of 
Mr.  John  Quincy  Adams  as  President — Internal  Improvements — Crimes  Act, 
1825 — Correspondence  with  J.  Evelyn  Denison,  Esq. — First  Bunker-Hill  Oration 
— Journey  to  Niagara 222-255 

CHAPTER    XII. 

1825-1826. 

Correspondence — Amendment  of  the  Judicial  System — Speech  on  the  Congress  of 
Panama — Eulogy  on  Adams  and  Jefferson — Reflected  to  Congress  256-281 

CHAPTER    XIII. 

1826-1827. 

Bankrupt  Law — Case  of  Ogden  vs.  Saunders — Difficulties  in  Georgia — Colonial 
Trade— Spanish  Claims 282-288 


CONTENTS.  xv 

CHAPTER    XIV. 

1827-1828. 

Elected  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States— Illness  and  Death  of  Mrs.  Webster,  at 
New  York — Her  Funeral,  in  Boston — Return  of  Mr.  Webster  to  Washington 
— Visited  by  Mr.  Ticknor  and  Mr.  Prescott — Speech  for  the  Revolutionary 
Officers — Speech  on  the  Tariff— Public  Dinner  in  Boston — The  Presidential 
Election — Prosecutes  for  a  Libel — Address  before  the  Boston  Mechanics'  As 
sociation  289-336 

CHAPTER    XV. 

1828-1829. 

Inauguration  of  President  Jackson — Death  of  Mr.  Ezekiel  Webster — Second  Mar 
riage  337-346 

CHAPTER    XVI. 

1829-1830. 

Power  of  Removal  from  Office — Nullification — The  Two  Speeches  on  Foot's  Resolu 
tion— Reply  to  Hayne  347-385 

CHAPTER    XVII. 

1830-1831. 

Mr.  Webster's  Popularity — Character  of  General  Jackson — Mr.  Clay's  Claims  to  the 
Presidency — Antimasonry — Dinner  to  Mr.  Webster,  in  New  York — Gives  up  a 
Journey  to  the  West — Nomination  of  Mr.  Clay  as  the  Candidate  of  the  National 
Republicans — Relief  of  Insolvent  Debtors  of  the  United  States — Miscellaneous 
Correspondence 386-410 

CHAPTER    XVIII. 

1831-1832. 

Modification  of  the  Tariff— Bill  to  Renew  the  Charter  of  the  Bank — President 
Jackson's  "  Veto  "—Speech  on  the  President's  Objections— Rejection  of  Mr.  Van 
Buren  as  Minister  to  England — Report  on  the  Apportionment  of  Representa 
tives— First  Purchase  at  Marshfield  411-428 

CHAPTER    XIX. 

1832-1833. 

Nullification — Conduct  of  South  Carolina — Speech  at  Worcester,  in  October,  1832 
— Reelection  of  General  Jackson — Mr.  Calhoun's  Position — The  President's 
Proclamation — Mr.  Clay's  Compromise  Bill — The  Force  Bill — Mr.  Webster's 
Views  of  the  Proper  Course  to  be  pursued — Debate  with  Mr.  Calhoun  on  the 
Nature  of  the  Government — President  Jackson's  Visit  to  New  England — Mr. 
Webster's  Visit  to  the  West— General  Jackson's  Sense  of  Mr.  Webster's  Ser 
vices — Correspondence 429-469 


xvi  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    XX. 

1833-1834. 

Mr.  Webster's  Financial  Views — Removal  of  the  Government  Deposits  from  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States — Mr.  Clay's  Resolution  of  Censure — Mr.  Webster's  Report 
on  the  Removal  of  the  Deposits — Introduces  a  Bill  to  meet  the  Crisis — The 
President's  Protest  against  the  Resolutions  of  the  Senate — Speech  in  Answer  to 
the  Protest— Personal  Relations  to  the  Bank— Rise  of  the  Whig  Party  470-500 

CHAPTER    XXI. 

1834-1835. 

Nominated  for  the  Presidency  by  the  Whigs  of  Massachusetts — Various  Popular 
Demonstrations  in  other  States — Correspondence  with  the  Antimasons  of  Penn 
sylvania — General  Harrison  nominated  by  the  whole  Opposition,  in  Pennsyl 
vania — Difficulties  with  France — War  averted — Defeat  of  the  Fortification  Bill 
— French  Spoliation  before  1800 — Speech  on  the  Power  of  Removal  from  Office 
— Mr.  Benton's  "  Expunging "  Resolution — Regulation  respecting  Treasury 
Drafts  on  the  Deposit  Banks 501-520 

CHAPTER    XXII. 

1835-1836. 

The  Independence  of  Texas  achieved — Mr.  Webster's  Desire  to  have  her  remain  a 
Nation  by  herself — Early  Spirit  of  the  Antislavery  Movement — Opinions  of  Mr. 
Webster  on  the  whole  Subject  of  Slavery — Treatment  of  the  Petitions  for  its 
Abolition  in  the  District  of  Columbia — "  Incendiary  Publications  " — Acknowl 
edgment  of  Texan  Independence — Loss  of  the  Fortification  Bill  at  the  Previous 
Session — Mr.  Webster's  Defence  of  his  own  Course — An  Unpublished  Speech — 
Custody  of  the  Public  Funds — Regulation  of  the  Deposit  Banks — Distribution 
of  Surplus  Revenues — Settlement  of  the  Difficulty  with  France — Presidential 
Election  of  1836 521-539 

CHAPTER    XXIII. 

1836-1837. 

The  "  Specie  Circular  " — A  "  Constitutional  Currency  " — Mr.  Benton's  Expunging 
Resolution — Mr.  Webster's  Protest — Slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia — Recep 
tion  of  Petitions — Farming  Operations — Proposes  to  resign  his  Seat — Reception 
in  New  York — Speech  at  Niblo's  Saloon — Journey  to  the  West — Special  Session 
of  Congress  in  the  Autumn  of  1837 — Mr.  Van  Buren's  Financial  Policy — Contro 
versy  with  Mr.  Calhoun — Texas  seeks  Admission  into  the  Union  .  540-570 

CHAPTER    XXIV. 

1837-1838. 

Project  for  a  Great  Western  Farm — Separate  Nationality  of  Texas— Slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia — The  Sub-Treasury — Preemption  Rights  for  Settlers  on  the 
Public  Lands — The  Commonwealth  Bank,  in  Boston — Correspondence,  571-580 

APPENDIX  AND  NOTES   ....  .        .        581-590 


LIFE  OP  DANIEL  WEBSTEE, 


CHAPTER    I. 
1782-1797. 


BIRTH    AND    PARENTAGE BOYHOOD EARLY  EDUCATION- 
DARTMOUTH    COLLEGE. 


-ENTERS 


NEAR  the  centre  of  New  Hampshire,  where  two  moderate 
rivers  unite,  and  form  the  Merrimac,  a  company  of  per 
sons  from  Kingston,  after  the  peace  of  1763,  obtained  from  the 
royal  governor  of  the  province  a  grant  of  a  township  of  land,  to 
which  the  name  of  Stevenstown  was  first  given,  from  the  name 
of  Colonel  Stevens,  their  leader.  Among  these  persons  was 
Ebenezer  Webster,  who  was  born  in  Kingston  in  1739,  the  son 
of  a  farmer  and  freeholder  of  the  same  name.  Like  many  of 
the  young  men  of  New  England,  he,  in  early  life,  enlisted  in 
the  provincial  troops,  raised  to  take  part  in  the  French  War ; 
and  became  a  private  in  one  of  the  companies  of  "  Rangers," 

which  were  commanded  by  Major  Robert  Rogers,  and  which 
2 


2  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  I. 

served  under  Sir  Jeffrey  Amherst  in  the  invasion  of  Canada.1 
He  rose  to  the  rank  of  captain  before  the  end  of  the  war.  At 
the  peace  he  returned  to  his  native  town,  was  married,  and 
joined  the  company  of  settlers  who  went  northward  into  the 
wilderness,  and  founded  the  town  of  Stevenstown,  the  name  of 
which  was  afterward  changed  to  Salisbury.  The  township,  as 
originally  laid  out,  was  four  miles  wide,  along  the  west  bank 
of  the  Merrimac,  and  extended  southwestwardly  for  nine  miles, 
nearly  to  the  top  of  the  Kearsarge  Mountain.  The  portion 
of  this  grant,  which  Ebenezer  Webster  obtained  for  himself,  lay 
farther  to  the  north  than  any  of  the  others,  so  that,  after  his 
log  house  was  built  upon  it,  there  was  no  civilized  neighbor 
between  him  and  Montreal. 

The  family  of  Webster,  from  which  this  pioneer  of  New 
Hampshire  was  descended,  appear  to  have  been  first  settled  at 
Hampton,  on  the  coast,  about  1636,  or  sixteen  years  after  the 
landing  of  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth.  Their  most  remote 
known  ancestor  was  Thomas  Webster,  from  whom  the  descent 
to  Ebenezer  Webster  can  be  regularly  traced  in  the  church  and 
town  records  of  Hampton,  Kingston,  and  Salisbury.  They 
were  originally  Scotch ;  but  they  probably  emigrated  to  this 
country  from  England. 

Precisely  how  long  Ebenezer  Webster  continued  to  live  in 
the  log  house,  which  he  must  have  erected  about  the  year  1764, 
cannot  now  be  determined ;  but  that  house  was  his  home  from 
the  time  when  it  was  built  until  near  the  close  of  the  Kevolu- 
tionary  War.  From  it  he  buried  his  first  wife,  Mehitable 
Smith,  who  died  in  March,  1774  ;  and  to  it  he  brought  Abigail 
Eastman,  who  became  his  second  wife  in  August  of  the  same 
year.  It  was  on  a  hill,  three  miles  westwardly  from  the  river. 
The  region  about  it  was  mountainous ;  the  winters  were  long 
and  dreary  ;  the  depth  of  snow  was  often  prodigious,  and  there 
were  no  regular  roads  for  communication  with  the  country 
below.  The  land  was  poor.  Of  comfort  there  was  little  to  be 
gained  there.  Of  the  necessaries  of  life,  what  could  be  had 
were  purchased  with  severe  toil,  hardship,  and  often  danger,  or 

1  From  the  journals  of  Major  Rogers,  the  enlistment  of  Ebenezer  Webster  oc- 
a  rare  and  curious  book,  printed  in  curred  in  1760,  or  when  he  was  about 
London,  in  1765,  it  may  be  inferred  that  two-and-twenty. 


1763.]  PARENTAGE.  3 

at  least  with  the  apprehension  of  danger ;  for,  although  the 
peace  of  1763  had  put  an  end  to  the  wild  and  cruel  forays  of 
the  Northern  Indians  into  the  settlements  of  New  England,  the 
memory  of  those  terrible  midnight  raids  had  not  yet  passed 
away,  and,  in  the  forest  that  stretched  from  Ebenezer  Webster's 
farm  to  the  frontier  of  Canada,  there  still  lurked,  if  not  roving 
bands,  roving  individual  savages,  whose  visits,  when  innocent 
of  blood,  too  well  suggested  the  horrors  of  a  time  not  long  gone 
by.1  In  such  scenes,  and  in  such  a  life,  he  who  had  "  come 
home  from  the  wars"  with  strong  elements  of  character  to 
settle  down  as  a  farmer  on  the  outposts  of  civilization,  to  be 
one  of  the  founders  of  a  new  town,  to  have  children  born  to 
him,  to  know  sorrow,  to  struggle  and  to  toil,  was  not  unlikely 
to  become  a  devoted  parent,  a  patriotic  and  respected  citizen, 
and  a  devout  man.  All  these  qualities  and  characteristics,  in 
fact,  belonged  to  Ebenezer  Webster.  He  is  described,  too,  as 
a  man  of  great  firmness,  whose  bearing  and  manner  were 
decisive  ; 9  tall  and  erect,  with  a  full  chest,  black  hair  and  eyes, 
and  rather  large  and  prominent  features.  Of  education,  save 
what  he  had  given  to  himself,  he  had  none ;  for  it  is  recorded 
of  him  that  he  never  saw  the  interior  of  a  school-house  in 
the  capacity  of  a  pupil.  Yet  it  is  known  that  some  of  the 
earliest  records  of  the  town  of  Salisbury  are  in  his  hand 
writing  ;  and  by  the  middle  period  of  his  life  he  was  suffi 
ciently  well  educated  to  fulfil,  from  that  time  to  his  death, 

1  When  speaking  once,  at  length,  of  clergyman,  the  Rev.  Thomas  Worcester, 

his  father  and  mother  and  their  life  in  A  council,  after  the  manner  of  the 

the  log  house,  Mr.  Webster  said :  "  They  churches  in  New  England,  was  assem- 

endured  together  in  this  hut  all  sorts  of  bled  to  perform  the  ordination.  But  a 

privations  and  hardships  ;  my  mother  dispute  arose  between  the  council  and 

was  constantly  visited  by  Indians  who  Mr.  Worcester  on  a  point  of  doctrine, 

had  never  before  gone  to  a  white  man's  and  a  long  time  was  spent  in  the  dis- 

house  but  to  kill  its  inhabitants,  while  cussion,  the  people  waiting  impatiently 

my  father  perhaps  was  gone,  as  he  fre-  without  for  the  ordination  to  proceed, 

quently  was,  miles  away,  carrying  on  At  length  Judge  Webster  was  appointed 

his  back  the  corn  to  be  ground,  which  to  wait  upon  the  council,  and  inquire 

was  to  support  his  family." — (MSS.  in  into  the  cause  of  the  delay.  He  ap- 

the  author's  possession.)  peared  before  them,  and  heard  their 

8  The  following  anecdote,  illustrating  statement.  "  Gentlemen,"  said  he,  "  the 

his  decision  of  character,  is  taken  from  ordination  must  come  on  now,  and,  if 

a  Memoir  of  him,  published  in  the  New-  you  cannot  assist,  we  must  try  to  get 

Hampshire  Statesman,  in  1858,  by  George  along  without  you.  The  point  under 

W.  Nesmith,  Esq.  In  1791,  he  was  ap-  discussion  must  be  postponed  to  some 

pointed  at  the  head  of  a  committee  of  other  day."  The  ordination  ceremonies 

the  town  and  the  church,  to  settle  a  proceeded  without  any  further  delay. 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[On.  I. 


with  entire  respectability,  the  functions  of  a  legislator  and  a 
magistrate.1 

He  had  been  married  a  second  time,  as  I  have  said,  not  long 
before  the  shock  sent  through  New  England  from  Bunker 
Hill  was  felt  in  her  remotest  borders,  and  her  yeomanry  sprang 
to  arms.  Captain  Webster  was  among  the  first  of  them  to  obey 
that  summons.  He  raised  a  company  in  his  own  town,  the 
population  of  which  had  then  become  so  considerable  that  it 
could  furnish  two  hundred  men ;  and,  with  the  other  New- 
Hampshire  troops,  he  and  the  company  which  he  commanded 
were  out  in  nearly  every  campaign  of  the  Revolutionary  "War. 
He  fought  at  Bennington  tinder  Stark,  and  at  White  Plains ; 
and  he  was  at  West  Point  when  Arnold's  attempt  to  surrender 
that  post  to  the  British  occurred.2  In  the  militia  of  New  Hamp 
shire  he  held  the  rank  of  colonel ;  but,  in  his  own  neighbor 
hood,  he  was  for  a  long  time  generally  called  "  the  captain." 

How  much  he  was  at  home  during  the  war  it  would  of 


1  One  of  his  townsmen  thus  described 
him  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the  son-in- 
law  of  Ezekiel  Webster,  Professor  San- 
born  of  Dartmouth  College,  in  1853  : 
"  Of  his  father,  Hon.  Ebenezer  Webster, 
I  have  a  perfect  recollection,  as  to  form 
and  features.  His  stature  was  nearly 
six  feet.  He  was  compact,  robust,  and 
well-proportioned,  and,  late  in  life,  in 
clined  to  corpulency.  His  complexion 
was  dark,  a  broad  projecting  forehead, 
eyes  large,  black,  and  piercing,  over 
shadowed  by  heavy  brows.  With  re 
spect  to  intellect,  he  was  a  perfect  ex 
ample  of  a  strong-minded,  unlettered 
man ;  of  sound  common  sense,  correct 
judgment,  and  tenacious  memory ;  all 
of  which  desirable  qualities  were  for 
him,  to  some  extent,  a  substitute  for 
education.  He  was  a  resolute,  deter 
mined  character,  and  never  easily  turned 
from  his  purpose,  when  once  convinced 
that  it  was  right."  —  (Letter  by  Mr. 
Thomas  H.  Pettingttl.  Correspondence 
of  Daniel  Webster,  vol.  i.,  p.  59.) 

2  "A  sergeant  of  his  company  informed 
me  that  he  was  among  the  first  [at  Ben 
nington]  to  scale  the  Tory  breastwork, 
as  it  was  called ;  and  that,  when  he  came 
out  of  the  battle,  he  was  so  covered 
with  dust  and  powder  that  he  could 
scarcely  be  recognized."  (Mr.  Pettin- 
gill,  ut  supra.}  In  1840,  while  travelling 


in  the  southwestern  part  of  New  Hamp 
shire,  and  anxious  to  reach  his  destina 
tion,  Mr.  Webster,  while  ascending  a 
hill,  observed  an  aged  man  before  him 
who  was  driving  a  fine  horse.  His  name 
was  Boynton.  Leaving  his  own  vehicle, 
Mr.  Webster  jumped  into  Mr.  Boynton's 
wagon  ;  so  that  "  the  first  thing  I 
knew,"  as  the  old  man  said  afterward, 
"he  was  sitting  beside  me."  But  he 
did  not  know  his  passenger  at  that  time, 
although  he  engaged  to  drive  him  to 
Wilton.  As  they  went  along,  convers 
ing  about  people  in  New  Hampshire,  Mr. 
Boynton  observed  that  he  had  known 
"  Old  Judge  Webster,  the  father  of 
Daniel ; "  he  had  been  "  out  in  the  Con 
tinental  War  with  him.  I  remember," 
said  he,  "  that  he  stood  guard  before 
General  Washington's  headquarters  the 
night  after  Arnold's  treason.  In  the 
morning  General  Washington  asked  him 
to  take  a  glass  of  wine  with  him  ;  and  I 
don't  believe  he  slept  a  wink  the  night 
after  that."  (MSS.)  It  was  a  well- 
known  tradition  in  New  Hampshire,  de 
rived  from  one  of  his  soldiers,  that  when 
he  was  posted  for  that  night  as  officer 
of  the  guard,  at  headquarters,  Washing 
ton  said  to  him,  "Captain  Webster,  I 
believe  I  can  trust  you." — (Mr.  Nesmittts 
Memoir  in  the  New-Hampshire  Statesman, 
ut  supra.) 


1782.     JEi.  1-14.]  BIRTH.  5 

course  be  impossible  to  ascertain  now.  But  the  domestic  events 
which  mark  this  portion  of  his  life,  and  render  his  name  and 
character  of  interest  to  the  world,  were  the  births  of  his  two 
sons,  Ezekiel  and  Daniel,  who  were  the  only  sons  of  his  second 
marriage.  The  former  was  born  on  the  llth  of  April,  1780, 
and  the  latter  on  the  18th  of  January,  1782.1  From  a  colla 
tion  of  all  the  evidence  respecting  the  place  in  which  Daniel 
was  born,  it  appears  that  his  brother  Ezekiel  and  one  of  his 
sisters  were  born  in  the  log  house ;  that  their  father  built  a 
second  house,  usually  called  a  "  frame  "  house,  near  the  same 
spot ;  and  that,  in  this  second  house,  Daniel  was  born.  In 
about  a  year  after  his  birth  his  father  removed  to  the  bank  of 
the  Merrimac,  to  the  house  in  which  he  died.3 

"  Elms  Farm,"  as  it  was  afterward  called,  from  the  numbers 
of  fine  elms  which  are  upon  it,  is  the  place  to  which  Captain 
Webster  removed  in  1783.  It  is  situated  in  a  valley,  at  a  bend 
of  the  Merrimac,  two  and  a  half  miles  below  the  head  of  that 
river.  It  was  originally  a  part  of  the  township  of  Salisbury  ; 
but  in  1828  a  new  town,  including  this  farm,  was  set  off  from 
the  eastern  end  of  Salisbury,  and  called  Franklin.  The  place 
was  bought  by  Mr.  Webster's  father,  of  a  family  whose  name 
was  Call.  They  were  the  first  settlers  upon  it  j  and,  many 
years  before  they  sold  it,  they  had  suffered  terrible  cruelties 
there  at  the  hands  of  the  Indians.8  High  ranges  of  hills  enclose 

1  The  children  of  Ebenezer  Webster,  tect  the    inhabitants   of   this  and  the 
by  his  first  marriage,  were  five — Olle,  neighboring  towns  against  the  Indians. 
a  daughter,  and  Ebenezer,  a  son,  who  The    Indians    made    constant    attacks, 
died   young ;   Susannah,   born  October,  often  so  suddenly,  that  they  could  not 
1766,   married   to  John  Colby ;   David,  be  resisted.     A  Mrs.  Call  was  killed  by 
and  Joseph.    The  children  of  the  second  them  on  this  spot,  about  the  year  1775. 
marriage  were  Mehitable,  Abigail,  mar-  The  cellar  of  her  cabin  is  close  by  my 
ried  to  Mr.  Haddock,  Ezekiel,  Daniel,  house.     She  was  an  elderly  woman,  and 
and  Sarah ;   Mehitable  and  Sarah  died  her  husband  and  her  son  were  at  work 
unmarried.  in  the  field,  not  half  a  mile  off.     Her 

2  A  sketch  of  the  house  in  which  Mr.  daughter-in-law,  with  her  child  in  her 
Webster  was   born,  drawn  by  Charles  arms,  seeing  the  Indians  coming,  jumped 
Lanman,   Esq.,   and   sanctioned  by  Mr.  in  behind  the  chimney,  hushed  her  baby, 
Webster,  is  prefixed  to  the  first  volume  and  so  avoided  discovery,  and  escaped 
of  his  works.     The  cut  at  the  head  of  death.    This  baby,  whose  name  was  John 
the  present  chapter  is  a  view  of  "  Elms  Call,  I  knew  very  well  when  I  was  a 
Farm,"  as  it  now  appears.  boy.     My  father  bought  this  place  of 

3  Mr.   Webster,   in  a    letter  written  that  family.   This  is  one  of  the  very  many 
from  this  spot  to  President  Fillmore,  in  border  stories  to  which  I  have  listened 
July,  1852,  says:   "Under  my  eyes,  at  of  winter  evenings,  in  the  early  part  of 
this  moment,  is  the  site  of  one  of  the  my  life.    You  will  perceive,  my  dear  sir, 
last  forts,  built  on  the  frontiers  to  pro-  that  I  am  old  enough  to  begin  to  become 


6  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  I. 

the  river  on  both  sides,  but  leaving  a  broad  "intervale"  of 
meadow.  The  two  streams  which  form  the  Merrimac  have 
retained  their  Indian  names.  One,  the  Pemigewasset,  rises  in 
the  White  Mountains,  and  flows  down  their  southern  slopes, 
"  the  beau  ideal  of  a  mountain  stream,"  as  Mr.  Webster  has 
described  it — "  cold,  noisy,  winding,  and  with  banks  of  much 
picturesque  beauty."  The  other,  the  Winnepiseogee,  is  the 
outlet  of  the  great  lake  of  the  same  name,  which  discharges  its 
waters  westwardly,  until  they  unite  with  those  of  the  mountain 
torrent,  making  a  circuit  of  about  a  hundred  miles  before  they 
reach  the  sea,  through  the  Merrimac,  at  Newburyport.  Con 
cord,  the  legislative  capital  of  New  Hampshire,  is  fifteen  miles 
below  Franklin,  on  the  same  side  of  the  river.  From  a  high 
sheep-pasture  on  the  Webster  farm,  through  a  wide  opening  in 
the  hills,  beyond  the  Kearsarge  Mountain,  in  a  northwesterly 
direction,  Ascutney  Mountain,  in  Yermont,  is  visible  ;  and 
from  the  same  spot,  looking  nearly  northeast,  Mount  Washing 
ton,  the  highest  peak  of  the  White  Mountains,  shows  its  snowy 
summit.  On  this  farm  the  boyhood  of  DANIEL  WEBSTER  was 
passed. 

~No  account  of  his  origin  can  be  complete  without  some 
attempt  to  find  in  his  race  those  remarkable  physical  traits 
which  distinguished  his  person  through  life,  and  which  are  so 
well  known  to  the  world,  in  their  unison  with  his  intellectual 
and  moral  nature.  Fortunately,  we  have  his  own  account  of 
the  physical  peculiarities  of  his  family,  given  with  his  accus 
tomed  clearness  in  a  few  sentences  of  his  autobiography.  From 
these  many  of  my  readers  may  be  surprised  to  learn  that 
the  Websters  of  New  England  have,  in  general,  "  light  com 
plexions,  sandy  hair,  a  good  deal  of  it,  and  bushy  eyebrows  ;  " 
and  that  they  "  are  rather  slender  than  broad  or  corpulent." a 
But  he  tells  us  that  his  father  and  his  father's  brothers  were 
very  unlike  in  their  personal  traits ;  that  his  father  resembled 
his  grandmother,  while  his  uncles  resembled  his  grandfather. 

garrulous  ;  for  it  is   certain  that   Mrs.  Franklin,  .May  3,    1846.  —  (Correspond- 

Call's  murder,  by  the   Indians,  a   hun-  ence,  ii.,  225. 

dred  years  ago,  has  little  to  do  with  the  2  Dr.   Noah   Webster,    the    eminent 

legislation  or  diplomacy  of  the  present  lexicographer,  was  of  a  collateral  branch 

time." — {Correspondence,  ii.,  535.)  of  this   family. — (Biographical  Memoir, 

1  Letter    to    Mr.    Blatchford,    from  Works,  i.) 


1782.     Mt.  1.]  FAMILY   COMPLEXION.  7 

This  grandmother,  his  lather's  mother,  was  Susannah  Bach- 
elder,  a  descendant  of  the  Rev.  Stephen  Bachelder,  in  the 
county  of  Rockingham.  She  had  black  hair  and  black  eyes, 
and  was  a  woman  of  uncommon  strength  of  character.  Her 
son,  Mr.  Webster's  father,  inherited  from  her  the  "  Bachelder 
complexion  ; "  her  other  sons  had  the  Webster  characteristics. 
The  same  division  of  the  parental  traits  took  place  in  Mr. 
Webster's  own  generation.  He  himself  has  said  that,  of  his 
four  brothers,  only  one  was  dark  like  himself;  the  other  three 
"  ran  oif  into  the  general  characteristics  belonging  to  the 
name."  In  fact,  however,  I  have  understood  that  his  own 
brother  Ezekiel,  who  is  represented  as  a  model  of  manly 
beauty,  although  his  complexion  was  not  so  dark  as  Daniel's, 
had  black  hair. 

For  which  of  these  two  brothers  there  appeared  to  be  the 
best  chance  of  health  and  longevity,  in  their  earlier  years,  their 
contemporaries  would  not  have  doubted.  Ezekiel  was  a  robust 
youth,  grew  nearly  to  manhood  in  the  healthy  labors  of  a  farm 
er's  son,  who  was  destined  for  a  farmer  himself,  was  afterward 
educated,  and  studied  and  practised  the  law ;  but  he  died 
instantly,  without  any  apparent  illness,  at  the  age  of  forty- 
nine.  Daniel  was  a  sickly  child,  and  for  that  reason  was 
not  put  to  work  upon  the  farm  so  much  as  his  brother ;  yet 
he  lived  to  be  a  man  whose  physical  constitution  and  frame 
seemed  to  be  a  fitting  tabernacle  for  so  great  an  intellect ;  and 
his  last  illness,  in  his  seventy-first  year,  was  almost  the  only 
acute  one  that  he  was  ever  called  to  endure  after  he  had 
grown  up. 

Of  the  mother  of  Daniel  Webster,  there  is  important  testi 
mony  from  her  sons.  That  she  was  a  woman  of  clear  and  vigor 
ous  understanding,  that  she  was  a  tender  and  self-sacrificing 
mother,  and  that  to  her  was  referred  the  final  decision  of  a  ques 
tion  that  was  to  affect  not  only  their  welfare,  but  her  own  and 
that  of  every  other  member  of  her  family,  are  well  authenticated 
facts. 

But  it  was  from  his  father  chiefly,  I  suppose — from  that 
"  Bachelder  complexion,"  physical  and  moral — that  Daniel 

1  Autobiography. 


8  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  I. 

Webster  derived  the  marked  qualities  of  his  nature ;  *  and  to 
the  father  I  therefore  now  return,  in  order  to  give  my  re.aders 
some  idea  of  the  feeling  with  which  his  son  ever  regarded  him, 
before  I  enter  upon  the  narrative  of  that  son's  childhood  and 
youth.  To  me  there  is  something  singularly  attractive  in  the 
image  of  that  tall,  dark  man,  in  form  and  presence  one  of  the 
noblest  of  the  earth,2  standing  on  his  not  too  fertile  New-Hamp 
shire  acres,  looking  abroad  into  the  world,  and  comparing  him 
self  with  men  for  whom  Nature  had  done  less  than  she  had  for 
him,  but  whom  education  had  placed  where  he  could  not  be 
their  competitor.  I  seem  to  see  his  deep,  black  eye  fall  ten 
derly  on  the  boys  who  are  growing  up  around  him,  marking 
the  elder  for  the  stay  and  staff  of  his  age  in  the  labors  of  home, 
and  setting  apart  the  younger  for  a  life  of  books  and  learning 
and  fame.  He  has  no  concealments  from  his  household  ;  and, 
as  time  rolls  on,  all  come  to  know  his  plan.  It  suits  the  cir 
cumstances,  it  is  in  accordance  with  the  habits  of  a  New-Eng 
land  family.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a  great  undertaking  in  such  a 
house,  to  send  even  one  son  "  to  college."  But  this  man  is  full 
of  resolution.  He  has  a  complexion,  as  General  Stark  said  of 
him,  "  which  burned  gunpowder  will  not  change,"  and  a 
heart,  as  his  great  son  said  of  him,  "  which  he  seemed  to  have 
borrowed  from  a  lion."  Moreover,  he  is  one  of  that  kind  of 
men  who  live  for  their  children  ;  and  he  knows  that  in  his 
laborious  life  he  has  nothing  else  for  which  to  live.  His  own 
want  of  early  education,  he  thinks,  shall  be  compensated  by 
that  which  he  will  give  to  this  intelligent,  though  feeble, 
youngest  boy ;  and  he  and  the  elder  lad  will  extort  from 
their  "  stubborn  glebe"  the  means  of  accomplishing  this  work 
o'f  love. 

He   came,   it  may  readily  be   supposed,   not   suddenly  or 
hastaly  to  this  resolution.    To  the  age  of  fourteen,  Daniel — who 

11  Writing  to  his  son  Fletcher,  in  1840,  of  understanding.     If  I  had  had  many 

'respecting  the  name  to  be  given  to  his  boys,  I  should  have  called  one  of  them 

eldest  grandson,  Mr.  Webster  said  :  "  I  '  Bachelder.'  "      The    boy   in   question, 

believe  we  are  all  indebted  to  my  father's  Mr.  Fletcher  Webster's  eldest  son,  was 

mother  for  a  large  portion  of  the  little  named  for  his  grandfather, 
•sense  and  character  which   belongs   to          2  Mr.  Webster  always  said  that  his 

us.      Her  name  was  Susannah  Bachel-  father  was  the  handsomest  man  he  had 

der^;  ehe  was  the  daughter  of  a  clergy-  ever   seen,  excepting   his   brother   Eze- 

<noan,.and  a  woman  of  uncommon  strength  kiel. 


1782.     Mt.  14.]  SCHOOL  DAYS.  9 

had  been  taught  to  read  at  home,  by  his  mother  or  his  elder 
sisters,  so  early  that  he  never  afterward  could  remember  when 
he  could  not  read  the  Bible — had  no  other  advantages  of  educa 
tion  than  such  as  he  could  obtain  at  the  poor  town-schools, 
which  were  kept  only  during  a  part  of  the  year.  But  his  own 
words  will  best  describe  how  this  was  managed,  and  to  what  it 
amounted : 

"  I  do  not  remember  when  or  by  whom  I  was  taught  to  read,  because 
I  cannot,  and  never  could,  recollect  a  time  when  I  could  not  read  the 
Bible.  I  suppose  I  was  taught  by  my  mother,  or  by  my  elder  sisters.  My 
father  seemed  to  have  no  higher  object  in  the  world  than  to  educate  his 
children  to  the  full  extent  of  his  very  limited  ability.  No  means  were 
within  his  reach,  generally  speaking,  but  the  small  town-schools.  These 
were  kept  by  teachers,  sufficiently  indifferent,  in  the  several  neighborhoods 
of  the  township,  each  a  small  part  of  the  year.  To  these  I  was  sent  with 
the  other  children. 

"  When  the  school  was  in  our  neighborhood,  it  was  easy  to  attend ; 
when  it  removed  to  a  more  distant  district,  I  followed  it,  still  living  at 
home.  While  yet  quite  young,  and  in  winter,  I  was  sent  daily  two  and  a 
half  or  three  miles  to  the  school.  When  it  removed  still  farther,  my 
father  sometimes  boarded  me  out  in  a  neighboring  family,  so  that  I 
could  still  be  in  the  school.  A  good  deal  of  this  was  an  extra  care, 
more  than  had  been  bestowed  on  my  elder  brothers,  and  originating  in  a 
conviction  of  the  slenderness  and  frailty  of  my  constitution,  which  was 
thought  not  likely  ever  to  allow  me  to  pursue  a  robust  occupation. 

"  In  these  schools,  nothing  was  taught  but  reading  and  writing ;  and, 
as  to  these,  the  first  I  generally  could  perform  better  than  the  teacher, 
and  the  last  a  good  master  could  hardly  instruct  me  in ;  writing  was  so 
laborious,  irksome,  and  repulsive  an  occupation  to  me  always.  My  mas 
ters  used  to  tell  me  that  they  feared,  after  all,  my  fingers  were  destined  for 
the  plough-tail." l 

Such  was  the  life  of  the  boy  Daniel  Webster  at  about 
the  period  when  the  foundations  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  were  laid.  The  strong  good  sense  and  intel 
ligent  patriotism  of  the  father  acted  upon  that  great  national 
event.9  His  townsmen  had  been  accustomed  to  intrust  to  him 


1  Autobiography,  written  by  Mr.  Web-  Constitution,  and  requested  me,  if  I  ever 
Bter  in  1830.  had  an  opportunity,  to  do  something  to 

2  Mr.  Webster  once  repeated  to  me,  perpetuate  it.      It  is  well   known  that 
with  great  pride,  a  little  speech  made  by  when  the  convention  of  New  Hampshire 
his  father  before  giving  his  vote  for  the  first  assembled,   in  February,    1788,   a 


10  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  I. 

such  public  stations  as  they  had  to  bestow,  and  he  sat  in  the 
convention  of  New  Hampshire,  which  ratified  the  Federal  Con 
stitution,  while  his  little  son  at  home  was  playing  among  the 
cowslips  in  the  sweet  meadows  of  the  Merrimac.  When  the 
father  gave  his  vote  for  "  the  more  perfect  Union  "  which  the 
new  frame  of  government  was  to  establish,  the  early  years  of 
his  child,  who  was  to  instruct  the  intellect  of  the  nation  in  its 
principles,  had  so  little  promise  of  health,  that,  as  he  grew  up, 
play  was  necessarily  allowed  to  be  his  chief  vocation. 

The  boy  became  an  adept  in  it.  He  played  all  through  the 
long  summer  days  when  he  could  not  work,  having  for  his  chief 
companion,  in  his  field-sports,  a  certain  battered  old  British  sol 
dier  and  sailor,  who  had  deserted  from  the  king's  colors  at 
Bunker  Hill,  and,  having  come  with  a  New-Hampshire  regiment 
at  the  close  of  the  war,  had  settled  himself  in  a  little  cottage 
on  the  Webster  farm.  From  this  man,  or  with  him,  he  learned 
the  art  of  angling,  which  remained  a  passion  with  him  through 
life.  He  apostrophizes  this  odd  character  in  his  autobiography, 
as  Hamlet  did  Yorick. 

"  Thou  hast  carried  me  on  thy  back  a  thousand  times," 

was  a  phrase  that  rushed  to  his  memory  when,  after  he  had 
become  a  pillar  of  the  state,  he  wrote  this  account  of  Robert 
Wise: 

"  Early  and  deeply  religious,  my  father  had  still  a  good  deal  of 
natural  gayety  ;  he  delighted  to  have  some  one  about  him  that  possessed 

majority  of  the  delegates  were  found  to  ment  which  will  enable  us  to  pay  off  the 

be  under  instructions  from  their  towns  national  debt — the  debt  which  we  owe 

to  vote  against  the  Constitution.     This  for  the  Revolution,  and  which  we  are 

was  the  case  with  Colonel  Webster.    But  bound  in  honor  fully  and  fairly  to  dis- 

the  convention  was  adjourned  to  meet  charge.      Besides,  I  have  followed  the 

again  in  June ;  and,  in  the  mean  time,  lead  of  Washington  through  seven  years 

Colonel  Webster  obtained  from  his  con-  of  war,  and  I  have  never  been  misled, 

stituents  permission  to  vote  according  to  His  name  is  subscribed  to  this  Constitu- 

his  own  judgment.     When  the  vote  was  tion.     He  will  not  mislead  us  now.     I 

about  to  be  taken,  he  rose,  and  said :  shall  vote  for  its  adoption." 
"  Mr.  President,  I  have  listened  to  the          I  have  taken  the  words  of  the  speech 

arguments  for  and  against  the  Constitu-  from  Mr.  Nesmith's  Memoir.     They  are 

tion.     I  am  convinced  such  a  govern-  substantially  the   same  with  those  re- 

ment  as  that  constitution  will  establish,  peated  to  me  by  Mr.  Webster.     Judge 

if  adopted — a  government  acting  direct-  Webster  was  one  of  the  electors  of  the 

ly  on  the  people  of  the  States — is  neces-  President    in    New    Hampshire,    when 

sary  for  the  common  defence  and  the  Washington  was  first   chosen  to  that 

general  welfare.     It  is  the  only  govern-  office. 


1782-97.    ^ET.  1-14.]  BOYISH  SPORTS.  11 

a  humorous  vein.  A  character  of  this  sort,  one  Robert  Wise,  with  whose 
adventures,  as  I  learned  them  from  himself,  I  could  fill  a  small  book,  was 
a  near  neighbor,  and  a  sort  of  humble  companion  for  a  great  many  years. 
He  was  a  Yorkshire  man ;  had  been  a  sailor ;  was  with  Byng  in  the 
Mediterranean ;  had  been  a  soldier ;  deserted  from  the  garrison  of  Gibral 
tar;  travelled  through  Spain  and  France  and  Holland;  was  taken  up 
afterward,  severely  punished,  and  sent  back  to  the  army ;  was  in  the 
battle  of  Minden;  had  a  thousand  stories  of  the  yellow-haired  Prince 
Ferdinand ;  was  sent  to  Ireland,  and  thence  to  Boston,  with  the  troops 
brought  out  by  General  Gage ;  fought  at  Bunker  Hill ;  deserted  to  our 
ranks ;  served  with  the  New-Hampshire  troops  in  all  the  succeeding  cam 
paigns,  and,  at  the  peace,  built  a  little  cottage  in  the  corner  of  our  field, 
and  lived  there  to  an  advanced  old  age.  He  was  my  Izaac  Walton.  He 
had  a  wife,  but  no  child.  He  loved  me,  because  I  would  read  the  news 
papers  to  him,  containing  the  accounts  of  battles  in  the  European  wars. 
He  had  twice  deserted  from  the  English  king,  and  once  at  least  com 
mitted  treason  as  well  as  desertion ;  but  he  had  still  a  British  heart. 
When  I  have  read  to  him  the  details  of  the  victories  of  Howe,  and  Jervis, 
etc.,  I  remember  he  was  excited  almost  to  convulsions,  and  would  relieve  his 
excitement  by  a  gush  of  exulting  tears.  He  finally  picked  up  a  fatherless 
child,  took  him  home,  sent  him  to  school,  and  took  care  of  him,  only,  as 
he  said,  that  he  might  have  some  one  to  read  the  newspaper  to  him.  He 
could  never  read  himself.  Alas,  poor  Robert  1  I  have  never  so  attained 
the  narrative  art  as  to  hold  the  attention  of  others  as  thou,  with  thy  York 
shire  tongue,  hast  held  mine.  Thou  hast  carried  me  many  a  mile  on  thy 
back,  paddled  me  over  and  over,  and  up  and  down  the  stream,  and 
given  whole  days  in  aid  of  my  boyish  sports,  and  asked  no  meed  but 
that,  at  night,  I  would  sit  down  at  thy  cottage  door,  and  read  to 
thee  some  passage  of  thy  country's  glory  1  Thou  wast  indeed  a  true 
Briton." ' 

It  was  in  this  happy  childhood  that  he  began  those  habits 
of  minute  observation  of  nature,  which  all  who  ever  knew  him 
knew  to  be  one  of  his  strongest  characteristics,  and  one  of  his 
greatest  pleasures.  Then,  for  example,  he  saw  and  never  forgot 
how  the  salmon  and  the  shad,  as  they  came  up  the  Merrimac, 
"  shook  hands,  and  parted "  at  the  confluence  of  the  two 
streams  which  make  that  river,  "  the  shad  all  going  into  the 
lakes,  and  the  salmon  all  keeping  up  the  mountain  torrent, 
which  they  continued  to  ascend,  as  used  to  be  said,  until  their 
back  fins  were  out  of  the  water." a  Then,  too,  he  first  began  to 
notice  how  the  river  was  deepening  its  channel ;  a  phenomenon 

1  Autobiography.  8  Letter  to  Jir.  Blatchford,  ut  supra. 


12  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  I. 

in  what  he  calls  "  the  philosophy  of  streams,"  which  he  con 
tinued,  at  intervals,  to  note  from  those  banks  for  fifty  years.1 
Then,  also,  he  must  have  acquired  that  strong  love  of  agricul 
ture  which  never  left  him ;  for  at  no  period  of  his  life,  after 
boyhood,  could  he  have  seen  much  of  practical  farming,  until 
he  became  possessed  of  his  father's  property ;  and  I  imagine 
that  this  is  not  a  propensity  which  educated  men  often  acquire 
after  they  have  become  cultivated  and  busy  men  of  the  world. 
In  this  easy  and  expanding  life,  overcoming,  each  year,  some 
thing  of  the  ailments  of  his  childhood,  he  grew  to  be  fourteen 
years  of  age,  and  imbibed  most  of  those  tastes  which  ever  after 
ward  drew  him,  when  he  could  release  himself  from  contact 
with  man,  into  the  closest  communion  with  Nature. 

In  this  period  also  we  are  to  find  the  early  influences  which 
gave  a  peculiar  tinge  and  fervor  to  his  patriotic  feelings — feel 
ings  that  always  carried  his  love  of  country,  by  emotions  whose 
sources  lay  deep  in  an  emotional  nature,  to  the  history  of  what 
had  been  done  and  suffered  in  order  to  make  a  country.  For 
we  are  to  remember  that  at  his  paternal  fireside  sat  and  talked, 
in  the  long  winter  evenings,  one  who  had  been  an  actor,  first  in 
the  great  war  by  which  our  fathers  helped  the  crown  of  Eng 
land  to  extinguish  the  power  of  France  on  this  continent,  and 
then  in  that  other  war  for  independence,  by  which  the  unre 
quited  and  misgoverned  provinces  severed  themselves  from  the 
parent  state.  Whoever  seeks  to  know  what  it  was  in  the  for 
mation  of  the  character  of  Daniel  Webster  that  gave  such  a 
glow  to  the  eloquence,  and  such  a  breadth  to  the  patriotism  of 
his  after-years,  whenever  and  wherever  American  history  con 
nected  itself  with  American  nationality,  must  go  back  to  that 
fireside,  and  listen  in  imagination  to  the  tales  which  his  young 
heart  drank  from  his  father's  lips. 

Finally,  we  must  go  to  this  period  as  the  time  when  the 
religious  tendencies,  which  Nature  had  implanted  in  his  tem 
perament,  received  their  first  impulses  and  their  early  develop 
ment.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  imperfections  or  his  fail 
ings,  his  religious  feelings  were  always  deep  and  fervent ;  and 
in  all  the  successes  or  vicissitudes  or  sorrows  of  his  life,  they 

1  Letter  to  Mr.  Blatchford,  ut  supra. 


1782-97.    -&T.  1-14.]  BOYISH  HEADING.  13 

grew  stronger  and  stronger  to  the  hour  of  his  death.  All  that 
need  now  be  said  of  the  special  form  of  Christian  faith  under 
which  his  childhood  was  passed  is,  that  it  was  doubtless  that 
which  was  derived  from  the  Puritans.  But  its  spirit,  as  it  pre 
vailed  in  his  father's  house  and  in  his  father's  life,  is  all  com 
prehended  in  two  emphatic  words,  which  he  applied  to  his 
parent,  and  which  described  him  as  "  religious,  but  not  sour." * 

"What  he  had  learned  of  books,  at  this  time,  we  are  partly 
told  by  himself  in  his  autobiography.  A  small  circulating 
library  had  been  established  in  the  neighborhood  by  his  father 
and  other  persons,  and  among  the  books  which  he  obtained 
from  it  was  the  Spectator.  Fond  of  poetry,  he  went  at  once  to 
the  criticism  on  Chevy  Chase,  for  the  sake  of  the  verses  which 
are  cited.  "  I  could  not  understand,"  he  says,  "  why  it  was 
necessary  that  the  author  of  the  Spectator  should  take  such 
great  pains  to  prove  that  Chevy  Chase  was  a  good  story; 
that  was  the  last  thing  I  doubted."  Of  other  poetry,  he  knew 
the  psalms  and  hymns  of  Dr.  Watts ;  and  he  informs  us  that  he 
could  repeat  them  at  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age.  There  never 
was,  in  truth,  a  time  in  his  subsequent  life  when  he  could  not 
repeat  them,  as  many  can  attest  who  have  heard  him  do  so  with 

1  "  He  had  in  him,"  says  Mr.  Web-  his  business  with  his  nephew,  and  re- 
ster,  what  I  collect  to  have  been  the  turned  home.  Soon  the  rumor  was  cir- 
character  of  some  of  the  old  Puritans,  culated  that  Judge  Webster  had  been 
He  was  deeply  religious,  but  not  sour,  seen  in  a  dancing-hall.  A  member  of 
On  the  contrary,  good-humored,  face-  his  church  entered  a  complaint,  requir- 
tious,  showing  even  in  his  age,  with  a  ing  satisfaction  for  this  reproach.  Par- 
contagious  laugh,  teeth  all  as  white  as  son  Worcester  suggested  a  written  ac- 
alabaster,  gentle,  soft,  playful,  and  yet  knowledgment.  Judge  Webster  replied 
having  a  heart  in  him  that  he  seemed  to  that  he  would  put  nothing  on  file,  but 
have  borrowed  from  a  lion.  He  could  that  he  would  make  an  oral  confession 
frown — a  frown  it  was — but  cheerful-  before  the  congregation.  Accordingly, 
ness,  good-humor,  and  smiles  composed  on  the  next  Sunday,  after  the  forenoon 
his  most  usual  aspect." — (Letter  to  R.  M.  exercises  were  closed,  he  rose  in  his 
Blatchford,  Esq.,  May  3,  1846.  Corre-  place,  and  said:  "A  few  days  since,  I 
spondence,  vol.  ii.,  p.  227.)  had  some  business  with  my  nephew, 

Mr.  Nesmith  relates  the  following  Stephen  Bohonon ;  went  up  to  his  house, 

specimen  of  his  humor  :  He  had  a  found  him  in  the  hall  of  the  tavern,  in- 

nephew,  Stephen  Bohonon  by  name,  structing  the  youth  in  dancing.  They 

who  had  been  a  soldier  in  his  company  were  in  the  midst  of  a  dance  when  I 

at  West  Point,  and  afterward  lived  at  entered  the  hall.  I  took  a  seat,  and 

the  "  South  Road  "  village,  in  Salisbury,  waited  until  the  dance  was  closed ;  took 

One  day,  having  some  business  with  his  the  earliest  opportunity  to  do  my  errand 

nephew,  he  went  to  this  village,  and  with  Stephen ;  found  the  young  people 

found  him  teaching  the  young  people  of  civil  and  orderly ;  saw  nothing  improper, 

the  neighborhood  to  dance.  He  entered  Now,  if,  in  all  this,  I  have  offended  any 

the  hall  where  the  dancing  was  going  on,  of  my  weaker  brethren,  I  am  sorry  for 

and,  after  waiting  a  short  time,  finished  it." — (New-Hampshire  Statesman.) 


14  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  I. 

singular  felicity,  sometimes  with  a  serious  and  sometimes  with 
a  humorous  application.  No  other  sacred  poetry  ever  appeared 
to  him  so  affecting  and  devout. 

He  also  read,  at  this  time,  Pope's  "  Essay  on  Man,"  and 
learned  to  repeat  the  whole  of  it.  This  was  done  systematically ; 
for,  he  says,  "  we  had  so  few  books,  that  to  read  them  once  or 
twice  was  nothing.  We  thought  they  were  all  to  be  got  by 
heart."  But  with  a  fondness  of  recollection,  that  will  cause  all 
who  remember  the  arrival  of  a  new  year's  almanac  in  such  a  home 
to  understand  him  when  he  pronounces  it  "an  acquisition," 
he  relates  how  he  one  night  rose  from  his  bed,  after  a  dispute 
with  Ezekiel  about  a  couplet  of  poetry  at  the  head  of  the  April 
page  in  the  new  annual,  groped  his  way  to  the  kitchen,  lighted 
a  candle,  and  went  to  find  the  little  pamphlet  in  a  distant  room. 
He  reached  the  object  of  his  search,  ascertained  that  he  was 
wrong  in  his  quotation,  returned  to  his  chamber,  blew  out  his 
candle,  and  went  to  bed.  But,  in  his  literary  eagerness,  he  had 
come  very  near  burning  down  the  house.  A  spark  from  the 
candle  had  set  fire  to  some  cotton  clothes  in  the  room  where 
the  almanac  had  been  left,  and  where  his  maternal  grand 
mother,  of  the  age  of  eighty,  was  sleeping.  The  flames  had 
caught  some  of  the  furniture,  and  even  part  of  the  woodwork 
of  the  room.  Luckily,  he  saw  the  light  before  he  fell  asleep. 
It  was  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  in  midwinter ;  and 
winter  in  New  Hampshire  is  no  genial  season.  He  sprang 
from  his .  bed,  and  roused  the  family  by  a  sharp  cry.  His 
father's  presence  of  mind  saved  the  house. 

Beyond  such  acquisitions  as  were  made  at  home,  and  the 
very  little  that  he  obtained  at  the  town  schools,  he  is  not  known 
to  have  had  any  other  learning  down  to  the  time  when  his  father 
determined  to  send  him  away  for  other  advantages.  But  I  must 
not  leave  this  period  of  his  first  school-days  without  mentioning 
his  masters,  whose  names  have  been  rescued  from  oblivion  by 
their  connection  with  his,  and  by  his  affectionate  fidelity  to  all 
early  associations.  Two  of  them  were  Thomas  Chase  and  James 
Tappan.  Of  neither  of  these  pedagogues,  however,  could  it 
probably  be  said  that  the  neighbors  were  much  astonished  by 
what  they  carried  in  their  heads. 

The  good  folk  of  Salisbury  were  well  aware  that  there  were 


1732-97.    Mi.  1-14.]  EARLY  TEACHERS.  15 

institutions  and  teachers  not  far  off,  that  could  do  rather  more 
for  their  children,  when  the  time  came,  than  Master  Chase  or 
Master  Tappan.  But  the  district  schools  of  New  England  have 
been,  from  the  first,  the  intellectual  nurseries  of  the  land ;  and 
it  was  in  these  that  the  two  worthies  above  named  dispensed 
such  food  for  infant  minds  as  they  had  to  give.  It  is  related  of 
Thomas  Chase,  by  Mr.  Everett,  I  presume  on  Mr.  Webster's 
authority,  that  he  could  read  tolerably  well,  and  wrote  a  good 
hand,  but  that  spelling  was  not  his  forte?  As  Mr.  Webster 
was  but  three  or  four  years  old  when  he  attended  Master  Chase, 
the  orthography  of  the  teacher  was  not  perhaps  of  the  last  impor 
tance.  Tappan  came  after  him,  and  had  somewhat  higher 
qualifications.  He  lived  to  a  very  advanced  age,  to  be  always 
tenderly  remembere.d  by  his  pupil,  and  to  receive  from  him 
more  substantial  tokens  of  affectionate  recognition  than  the 
words,  however  graceful  and  touching  they  were,  that  came  to 
the  aged  teacher  from  a  pen  whose  faculty  of  expressing  sym 
pathy  and  kindness  and  consolation  was  scarcely  less  than  its 
power  to  address  and  control  the  understandings  of  men. 

There  was  also  a  third  master,  whose  name  Mr.  Webster 
has  commemorated  in  an  especial  manner,  in  connection  with 
the  first  time  that  he  ever  saw  a  copy  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  This  was  William  Hoyt,  who  taught  the  school 
in  Salisbury  for  many  years,  and  who  also  fulfilled  the  function 
of  keeping  a  small  shop.  Mr.  Webster  has  not  directly  said 
that  he  attended  Hoyt's  school,  but,  from  his  account  of  him, 
it  is  no  doubt  to  be  inferred  that  he  did : 

"  William  Hoyt  was  for  many  years  teacher  of  our  country  school  in 
Salisbury.  I  do  not  call  it  village  school,  because  there  was  at  that  time 
no  village  ;  and  boys  came  to  school  in  the  winter,  the  only  season  in  which 
schools  were  usually  open,  from  distances  of  several  miles,  wading  through 
the  snow  or  running  upon  its  crust,  with  their  curly  heads  of  hair  often 
whitened  with  frost  from  their  own  breath.  I  knew  William  Hoyt  well, 
and  *  every  truant  knew.'  He  was  an  austere  man,  but  a  good  teacher 
of  children.  He  had  been  a  printer  in  Newburyport,  wrote  a  very  fair 
and  excellent  hand,  was  a  good  reader,  and  did  teach  boys,  that  which  so 
few  masters  can  or  will  do,  to  read  well  themselves.  Beyond  this,  and 
perhaps  a  very  slight  knowledge  of  grammar,  his  attainments  did  not 

1  Biographical  Memoir,  Works,  vol.  i.,  xxi. 


16  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  L 

extend.  He  had  brought  with  him  into  the  town  a  little  property,  which 
he  took  very  good  care  of.  He  rather  loved  money ;  of  all  the  cases  of 
nouns,  preferring  the  possessive.  He  also  kept  a  little  shop  for  the  sale  of 
various  commodities,  in  the  house  exactly  over  the  way  from  this.  I  do 
not  know  how  old  I  was,  but  I  remember  having  gone  into  his  shop  one 
day,  and  bought  a  small  cotton  pocket-handkerchief  with  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  printed  on  its  two  sides.  From  this  I  learned  either 
that  there  was  a  constitution,  or  that  there  were  thirteen  States.  I  remem 
ber  to  have  read  it,  and  have  known  more  or  less  of  it  ever  since.  William 
Hoyt  and  his  wife  lie  buried  in  the  graveyard  under  our  eye,  on  my  farm, 
near  the  graves  of  my  own  family.  He  left  no  children.  I  suppose  that 
this  little  handkerchief  was  purchased  about  the  time  I  was  eight 
years  old,  as  I  remember  listening  to  the  conversation  of  my  father 
and  Mr.  Thompson  upon  political  events  which  happened  in  the  year 
1790."  ' 

About  the  year  1Y91,  his  father,  who  ha\l  been  a  member  of 
both  Houses  of  the  State  Legislature  at  various  times,  was  made 
a  Judge  of  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas  for  the  county  in  which 
he  lived.  It  was  the  practice  in  New  Hampshire,  at  that  day, 
to  constitute  this  court  by  the  appointment  of  a  lawyer  as  pre 
siding  judge,  and  to  associate  with  him  two  assistant  judges, 
who  were  generally  called  "  side  justices."  The  latter  were 
commonly  selected  from  among  the  substantial  farmers.  They 
sat  in  court  at  the  trial  of  causes ;  and,  as  all  the  judges  had  the 
right,  if  they  chose  to  exercise  it,  to  sum  up  the  case  to  the  jury, 
the  several  members  of  the  court  might  differ  on  the  law,  as 
well  as  the  jury  on  the  facts.  There  was,  however,  much  busi 
ness  transacted  at  those  courts  which  was  not  strictly  judicial, 
but  rather  administrative  and  prudential,  relating  to  the  affairs 
of  the  county,  and  requiring  strong  good  sense,  integrity  of  pur 
pose,  and  activity  of  mind — qualities  which  Judge  Webster  pos- 

1  Memorandum  dictated  to  Mr.  Blatch-  dear ;  and  a  cotton  handkerchief  could 

ford,  at  Franklin,  October  29,  1850. —  be  made  and  printed  for  a  few  cents. 

(Correspondence,  ii.,  398.)  But  I  fear  that,  however  durable  may 

It  was  a  good  deal  the  practice  in  have  been  the  impression  produced  by  a 

the  latter  part  of  the  last,  and  the  be-  few  readings  on  the  mind  of  such  a  boy 

ginning  of  the  present  century,  to  print  as  Daniel  Webster,  the  impression  of 

such  documents  on  the  cotton  handker-  the  types  on  his  pocket-handkerchief 

chiefs  sold  through  the  country.  Many  could  not  have  lasted  long  after  its  first 

of  my  readers  will  remember  the  Dec-  immersion  in  water.  My  own  recollec- 

laration-of  Independence,  Washington's  tion  of  these  specimens  of  our  infant 

Farewell  Address,  as  well  as  the  Consti-  manufactures  is,  that  they  were  very  at- 

tution,  so  printed.  It  may  have  been  a  tractive  to  the  youthful  mind,  but  that 

rude,  but  it  was  a  happy  thought,  with  the  housewives  generally  held  that  they 

whomsoever  it  originated.  Paper  was  "  wouldn't  wash." 


1782-1Y9'7.]  EDUCATION  DETERMINED.  17 

sessed  in  a  remarkable  degree.  The  position  of  "  side  justice," 
when  filled  by  such  a  man,  was  a  highly  useful  and  respectable 
one.  There  was  a  salary  attached  to  the  office,  amounting  to 
three  or  four  hundred  dollars  a  year,  which  Mr.  Webster  says 
was  "  a  sum  of  the  greatest  importance  to  the  family."  It  is 
not  probable  that  this  increase  of  his  income  caused  Judge 
Webster  to  decide  immediately  to  give  Daniel  a  collegiate 
education,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  when  the  time  came 
for  that  decision,  he  felt  that  this  salary  would  be  a  very  im 
portant  aid  to  him  in  carrying  out  his  plan.  If  his  pecuniary 
circumstances  had  been  such  as  to  enable  him  to  devote  the 
whole  of  this  sum  to  his  youngest  son's  expenses  at  college,  it 
would  have  been  quite  sufficient  for  the  purpose.  But  this  was 
not  the  case.  The  sequel  did  not  show  that  the  judicial  salary 
could  meet  what  the  excellent  parent  finally  had  to  do. 

Daniel  was  eleven  years  old  when  this  improvement  in  his 
father's  affairs  took  place.  He  passed  three  or  four  years  more 
in  the  kind  of  life  which  he  thus  describes :  "  I  read  what 
I  could  get  to  read,  went  to  school  when  I  could ;  and,  when 
not  at  school,  was  a  farmer's  youngest  boy,  not  good  for  much 
for  want  of  health  and  strength,  but  was  expected  to  do  some 
thing."  1  At  the  end  of  this  time,  in  the  summer  of  1795,  his 
father  disclosed  to  him  his  purpose  to  give  him  a  better  educa 
tion  than  he  had  been  able  to  afford  to  his  elder  sons.  But  it 
does  not  appear,  by  what  can  be  gathered  from  a  collation  of 
Mr.  "Webster's  autobiography  and  portions  of  his  correspond 
ence,  that  he  understood  at  this  time  that  he  was  to  be  sent  to 
college,  or  that  his  father  mentioned  the  subject  of  his  educa 
tion  to  him  in  reference  to  such  a  step.  What  occurred  in 
1795,  however,  can  be  related  by  no  one  else  as  he  has  re 
lated  it,  and  I  therefore  transcribe  his  own  touching  account 
of  it: 

"  Of  a  hot  day  in  July,  it  must  have  been  in  one  of  the  last  years  of 
Washington's  administration,  I  was  making  hay  with  my  father,  just 
where  I  now  see  a  remaining  elm-tree.  About  the  middle  of  the  forenoon 
the  Honorable  Abiel  Foster,  M.  C.,  who  lived  in  Canterbury,  six  miles  off, 
called  at  the  house,  and  came  into  the  field  to  see  my  father.  He  was  a 
worthy  man,  college-learned,  and  had  been  a  minister,  but  was  not  a 

1  Autobiography. 
3 


18  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  I. 

person  of  any  considerable  natural  power.  My  father  was  his  friend  and 
supporter.  He  talked  a  while  in  the  field,  and  went  on  his  way.  When 
he  was  gone,  my  father  called  me  to  him,  and  we  sat  down  beneath  the 
elm,  on  a  hay-cock.  He  said,  '  My  son,  that  is  a  worthy  man ;  he  is  a 
member  of  Congress ;  he  goes  to  Philadelphia,  and  gets  six  dollars  a  day, 
while  I  toil  here.  It  is  because  he  had  an  education,  which  I  never  had. 
If  I  had  had  his  early  education  I  should  have  been  in  Philadelphia  in  his 
place.  I  came  near  it  as  it  was.  But  I  missed  it,  and  now  I  must  work 
here.'  '  My  dear  father,'  said  I,  l  you  shall  not  work.  Brother  and  I  will 
work  for  you,  and  will  wear  our  hands  out,  and  you  shall  rest.'  And  I 
remember  to  have  cried,  and  I  cry  now  at  the  recollection.  '  My  child,' 
said  he,  '  it  is  of  no  importance  to  me.  I  now  live  but  for  my  children.  I 
could  not  give  your  elder  brothers  the  advantages  of  knowledge,  but  I  can 
do  something  for  you.  Exert  yourself,  improve  your  opportunities,  learn, 
learn,  and,  when  I  am  gone,  you  will  not  need  to  go  through  the  hard 
ships  which  I  have  undergone,  and  which  have  made  me  an  old  man 
before  my  time."  1 

When  the  next  spring  arrived,  his  father  took  an  important 
step,  but  still  without  informing  him  that  he  was  to  be  pre 
pared  for  college,  and  apparently  without  having  definitively 
decided  that  point  in  his  own  mind.  In  1781  there  had  been 
founded  at  Exeter,  by  the  Honorable  John  Phillips,  an  institu 
tion,  which  has  ever  since  been  known  as  the  Phillips  Exeter 
Academy.  It  has  always  been  conducted  like  some  of  the 
great  schools  in  England ;  that  is  to  say,  the  boys  are  lodged  in 
the  houses  of  respectable  families  in  the  town,  and  they  attend 
a  school  that  is  held  in  the  academy  building  erected  for  the 
purpose,  and  furnished  with  appropriate  rooms  for  the  different 
classes.  Its  principal,  in  Mr.  Webster's  time,  and  for  forty 
years  afterward,  was  Dr.  Benjamin  Abbot,  one  of  the  most 
eminent  instructors  of  youth  that  this  country  has  produced. 

To  this  institution  young  Webster  was  taken  by  his  father  in 
May,  1Y96.2  He  had  never  been  from  home  before,  and  the 
change,  he  says,  overpowered  him.  He  found  himself  among 
ninety  boys,  who  had  seen  more,  and  appeared  to  know  more 
than  he  did ;  "  and  I  scarcely  remained,"  he  adds,  "  master  of 
my  own  senses."  But  this  probably  soon  wore  off,  on  all  occa- 

1  Letter  to  Mr.  Blatchford. — (Corre-  who  was  accounted  the  wit  of  the  fam- 
spondence,  ii.,  228.)  ily.     He  was  in  the  habit  of  saying  that 

2  Mr.   Webster    had    an  elder  half-  Daniel  was   sent  to  school  in  order  to 
brother,  whose  name  was  Joseph,  and  make  him  "  equal  to  the  rest  of  the  boys." 


1796.]  RAPID  ADVANCEMENT.  19 

sions,  at  least,  but  one.  He  was  put  into  the  lowest  class,  and 
began  English  grammar,  writing,  and  arithmetic.  The  follow 
ing  anecdote  is  given  by  Mr.  Everett,  as  a  proof  of  the  rapidity 
of  his  progress  :  At  the  end  of  a  month,  the  usher 1  said  to  him 
one  morning,  "  Webster,  you  will  pass  into  the  other  room,  and 
join  a  higher  class ; "  and  added,  "  Boys,  you  will  take  your 
final  leave  of  "Webster — you  will  never  see  him  again." 2  That 
he  was  transferred  to  a  higher  class,  in  rather  a  marked  manner, 
was  told  by  himself  to  one  of  his  early  friends,  who  has  added 
the  following  explanation  of  the  occurrence,  as  he  received  it 
from  Mr.  "Webster : 

"  The  incident  related  by  Mr.  Everett,  in  his  Memoir  of  Mr.  Webster, 
respecting  his  elevation  to  a  higher  class,  at  the  end  of  the  first  month 
at  the  academy  in  Exeter,  needs,  I  think,  a  little  correction  or  explanation, 
in  order  to  present  its  most  important  bearing  upon  his  future  life. 
"When  his  first  term  at  Exeter  was  near  its  close,  the  usher  said :  '  Web 
ster,  you  may  stop  a  few  minutes  after  school ;  I  wish  to  speak  to  you.' 
When  the  other  scholars  had  gone,  the  usher  asked  him  whether  he 
intended  to  return  to  the  academy  after  the  vacation.  The  answer  indi 
cated  something  like  reluctance.  It  had  not  escaped  the  observation  of 
the  usher,  that  Webster's  rustic  manners  and  unfashionable  raiment  had 
drawn  upon  him  the  ridicule  of  some  of  his  associates,  who,  in  every 
respect,  except  habiliments  and  external  accomplishments,  were  greatly  his 
inferiors.  The  inference  was  justly  drawn  that  the  academy  was  in  danger 
of  losing  an  estimable  and  promising  pupil,  while  it  retained  others  who 
gave  no  promise  of  doing  honor  to  that  distinguished  seminary.  The 
usher,  therefore,  judiciously  and  kindly  remarked  to  Mr.  Webster  that  he 
was  a  better  scholar  than  any  in  his  class ;  that  he  learned  more  readily 
and  easily  than  they  did ;  and,  if  he  would  return  at  the  commencement 
of  the  next  term,  he  should  be  put  into  a  higher  class,  and  should  no 
longer  be  hindered  in  his  progress  by  those  boys  who  cared  more  for 
play  and  dress  than  for  solid  improvement.  '  These  were  the  first  truly 
encouraging  words,'  said  Mr.  Webster,  '  that  I  ever  received  with  regard 
to  my  studies.  I  then  resolved  to  return,  and  pursue  them  with  diligence 
and  so  much  ability  as  I  possessed.'  Probably  the  kindness  and  good  judg 
ment  of  the  usher  had  an  important  influence  upon  the  whole  course  of 
Mr.  Webster's  after-life."  3 

In  October  he  went  home  for  a  short  vacation,  and  then 

1  Nicholas  Emery,  afterward  an  emi-          3  Letter  by  J.  W.  McGaw,  Esq.,  of 
nent  lawyer  and  judge  in  Portland,  Maine.  Bangor,  November  16,   1852.  —  (Corre- 

2  Biographical  Memoir. — (Works,   i.,  spo ndence,  i.,  48-52.) 
xxiv.) 


20  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  I. 

returned  to  the  academy,  and  began  the  Latin  grammar.  Dr. 
Abbot  was  absent  on  account  of  indisposition,  and  a  very  young 
usher  was  fulfilling  a  part  of  the  doctor's  duties.  This  was 
Joseph  Stevens  Buckminster,  whose  early  maturity,  personal 
graces,  scholarship,  piety,  and  eloquence,  left  an  impression  in 
New  England  that  is  even  now  but  little  weakened,  although 
more  than  half  a  century  has  elapsed  since  his  character  became 
sanctified  in  that  community,  by  an  early  death,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-eight.1  In  1796,  Buckminster  was  an  advanced  pupil 
of  the  academy,  where  he  had  won  great  distinction  as  a 
scholar,  and  where  his  moral  excellence,  and  the  fascination 
of  his  manners,  had  made  him  the  idol  of  all  connected  with 
the  institution. 

To  this  youthful  and  brilliant  teacher,  younger  than  him 
self,  "Webster's  first  exercises  in  Latin  were  recited.  It  was 
Buckminster  who  first  endeavored  to  overcome  in  the  pupil  a 
native  diffidence,  which  will  astonish  any  reader,  who  now 
learns,  for  the  first  time,  that  Daniel  Webster  could  not,  when 
a  boy,  make  a  school  declamation.  This  fact,  which  would 
scarcely  be  credited  on  any  other  testimony  than  his  own,  was 
recorded  by  him  in  his  autobiography  with  perfect  frankness, 
and  with  his  usual  precision,  and  is  therefore  to  be  accepted 
just  as  he  states  it : 

"  I  believe  I  made  tolerable  progress  in  most  branches  which  I  attended 
to  while  in  this  school ;  but  there  was  one  thing  I  could  not  do — I  could 
not  make  a  declamation.  I  could  not  speak  before  the  school.  The  kind 
and  excellent  Buckminster  sought,  especially,  to  persuade  me  to  perform 
the  exercise  of  declamation  like  other  boys,  but  I  could  not  do  it.  Many 
a  piece  did  I  commit  to  memory,  and  recite  and  rehearse  in  my  own  room, 
over  and  over  again,  yet,  when  the  day  came,  when  the  school  collected  to 
hear  declamations,  when  my  name  was  called,  and  I  saw  all  eyes  turned  to 
my  seat,  I  could  not  raise  myself  from  it.  Sometimes  the  instructors 
frowned,  sometimes  they  smiled.  Mr.  Buckminster  always  pressed  and 
entreated,  most  winningly,  that  I  would  venture,  but  I  could  never  com 
mand  sufficient  resolution.  When  the  occasion  was  over,  I  went  home,  and 
wept  bitter  tears  of  mortification." 2 

It  would  have  been  interesting  if  he  had  added  a  few 

1  Buckminster  was  born  May  26, 1784 ;          2  Autobiography.  —  (  Correspondence, 
entered  Harvard  College  in  July,  1797 ;    vol.  i.,  p.  9.) 
graduated  in  1800 ;  died  in  1812. 


1796.]  LEAVES  EXETER.  %± 

words  more,  and  had  given  us  his  own  recollection  of  the 
time  when  this  timidity  gave  way,  and  the  means  which  he 
took,  if  he  ever  took  any,  to  overcome  it.  The  image  of  De 
mosthenes,  breaking  up  the  impediments  in  his  speech,  occurs 
at  once  to  the  mind.  But  there  is  probably  no  parallel 
between  the  two  cases.  Mr.  "Webster's  difficulty  was  doubtless 
in  some  degree  connected  with  the  state  of  his  physical  system ; 
but,  I  imagine  that,  as  he  grew  stronger,  it  disappeared  at  once, 
and  without  his  being  conscious  of  the  change.  The  circum 
stances,  too,  by  which  he  was  surrounded,  may  have  had  some 
thing  to  do  with  his  inability  to  speak  before  the  school.  He 
came  there  a  rustic  boy  of  fourteen,  independent,  but  shy,  did 
not  mix  a  great  deal  in  the  sports  of  the  other  boys,  and  was 
perhaps  less  well  clad  than  most  of  them.  The  tyranny  which 
a  great  public  school  can  exercise  over  its  better  and  more  sen 
sitive  members  is  proverbial ;  and  it  is  not  less  a  tyranny,  in 
such  cases,  because  it  may  be  an  unintentional  one.  Mr.  "Web 
ster  has  not  analyzed  the  feeling  which  made  it  impossible  for 
him  to  ascend  the  platform  at  Exeter ;  but  two  of  his  early 
friends,  one  of  whom  was  with  him  at  the  school,  have  stated  facts 
which  warrant  my  suggestions.1  I  judge  it  to  have  been  a  tem 
porary  embarrassment,  of  which  he  never  was  specially  conscious 
afterward,  because  there  is  no  record,  so  far  as  I  am  informed,  of 
his  having  at  a  later  period  subjected  himself  to  any  discipline 
on  account  of  such  a  feeling,  as  there  is  also  no  tradition  of 
his  having  experienced  it  after  he  entered  college.  On  the  con 
trary,  he  became  at  Dartmouth  a  very  easy  and  impressive 
speaker  and  debater.  But  the  remainder  of  his  preparatory 
education,  before  he  went  to  college,  was  passed  under  a 
private  tutor ;  and  he  was  not,  therefore,  in  a  situation  to 
be  exercised  in  public  declamation  until  he  joined  that  insti 
tution. 

He  remained  at  Exeter  only  about  nine  months.  In  De 
cember,  1796,  or  January,  1Y97,  his  father  came  for  him, 
and  took  him  home.  He  had  remained  at  the  academy 
long  enough,  however,  to  form  some  friendships  with  persons 
with  whom  he  was  afterward  associated  in  public  or  private 

1  See  the  letter  of  James  H.  Bing-  the  extract  quoted  above,  from  J.  W. 
ham,  Esq.  ( Correspondence,  i.,  54) ;  and  McGaw,  Esq. 


22  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  I. 

life.1  He  lias  nowhere  assigned  any  reason  why  lie  was  removed 
from  Exeter.  His  progress  there  must  have  been  entirely  satis 
factory  to  his  father,  his  teachers,  and  himself.  But  probably 
the  expense,  although  moderate,  must  have  had  some  influence 
with  his  father,  who  found  that  he  could  command  from  a 
clergyman  in  his  own  neighborhood  good  instruction  on  easier 
terms.  The  state  of  his  health,  too,  may  have  rendered  it  desir 
able  that  he  should  be  nearer  home ;  or  it  may  have  been 
thought  that,  as  he  was  now  fifteen  years  old,  he  could  be 
carried  forward  faster  by  a  private  tutor  than  he  could  be  in  a 
great  public  school. 

For  some,  or  all  of  these  reasons,  his  father  determined,  in 
February,  1797,  to  place  him  with  the  Rev.  Samuel  "Wood,  the 
minister  of  the  adjoining  town  of  Boscawen.  The  distance 
was  about  six  miles  from  their  home.  On  the  way  thither  his 
father  first  disclosed  to  him  the  plan  which  he  had  formed  of 
giving  him  a  collegiate  education.  "  I  remember,"  he  says, 
"  the  very  hill  which  we  were  ascending,  through  deep  snows, 
in  a  New-England  sleigh,  when  my  father  made  known  this 
purpose  to  me.  I  could  not  speak.  How  could  he,  I  thought, 
with  so  large  a  family,  and  in  such  narrow  circumstances,  think 
of  incurring  so  great  an  expense  for  me  ?  A  warm  glow  ran  all 
over  me,  and  I  laid  my  head  on  my  father's  shoulder,  and 
wept."2 

Of  the  qualifications  of  Dr.  Wood  for  the  charge  which  he 
had  undertaken,  we  can  judge  only  from  the  very  little  which 
Mr.  Webster  has  said  with  respect  to  the  state  of  his  prepara 
tion  when  he  entered  college.  It  was  doubtless  a  period,  as 
Mr.  Everett  has  observed,  when  the  general  standard  of  classical 
attainments  in  our  country  was  exceedingly  low — far  lower  than 
it  had  been  for  several  generations  succeeding  the  first  settle 
ment  of  the  country ;  and  it  was  long  after  Mr.  Webster  had 
entered  upon  the  active  duties  of  life  before  there  began  to  be 
any  improvement  in  this  respect.  Dr.  Wood  was  as  good  a 
scholar,  it  is  fair  to  presume,  as  most  clergymen  in  New  Eng- 

1  He  mentions,  in  his  autobiography,  and  James  H.  Bingham,  now  of  Clare- 

"  J.  W.  Bracket,  late  of  New  York,  de-  mont,  N.  H." 

ceased;  William  Garland,  late  of  Ports-          2 Biographical  Memoir.  —  (Works,  L, 

mouth,   deceased  ;    Governor    Cass,   of  xxiv.) 
Michigan ;  'Mr.  Saltonstall  [of  Salem]  ; 


1796.]  ENTERS  COLLEGE.  23 

land  at  that  day  ;  and  it  is  equally  safe  to  assume  that  he  was 
not  a  better  one.  When  Mr.  Webster  says  that  he  got  "  a  mere 
breaking  in,"  and  that  he  went  to  college  "  miserably  prepared, 
both  in  Latin  and  Greek,"  we  are  to  remember  two  things : 
first,  that  he  remained  with  Dr.  Wood  only  six  months,  and 
that  at  Exeter  he  had  but  a  short  training  in  the  Latin  gram 
mar  and  none  in  the  Greek  ;  secondly,  that  at  college,  and 
afterward,  as  will  hereafter  appear,  he  became  a  very  good 
Latin  scholar  at  least,  and  was  therefore  very  likely  to  depre 
ciate  the  acquisitions  which  he  carried  with  him  when  he  left 
Dr.  Wood.1  In  his  autobiography  he  says  : 

"  Mr.  Wood  put  me  upon  Virgil  and  Tully,  and  I  conceived  a  pleasure 
in  the  study  of  them,  especially  the  latter,  which  rendered  application  no 
longer  a  task.  With  what  vehemence  did  I  denounce  Catiline  !  with  what 
earnestness  struggle  for  Milo !  In  the  spring  I  began  the  Greek  grammar, 
and  at  midsummer  Mr.  Wood  said  to  me :  'I  expected  to  keep  you  till 
next  year,  but  I  am  tired  of  you,  and  I  shall  put  you  into  college  next 
month.'  And  so  indeed  he  did,  but  it  was  a  mere  breaking  in ;  I  was 
indeed  miserably  prepared  both  in  Latin  and  Greek;  but  Mr.  Wood 
accomplished  his  purpose,  and  I  entered  Dartmouth  College,  as  a  fresh 
man,  August,  1797.2 

While  he  was  at  Dr.  Wood's  an  incident  occurred  which 
shows  the  humorous  indulgence  of  his  father's  treatment  of 
him,  and  which  I  should  mar  if  I  were  to  attempt  to  repeat 
it  in  any  other  than  the  colloquial  way  in  which  he  related 
it  to  some  friends,  on  a  drive  from  Boston  to  Salem,  in  1825  : 

"  My  father  sent  for  me  in  haying-time,  to  help  him,  and  put  me  into  a 
field  to  turn  hay,  and  left  me.  It  was  pretty  lonely  there,  and,  after  work 
ing  some  time,  I  found  it  very  dull ;  and,  as  I  knew  my  father  was  gone 

1  In  1825  he  spoke  of  Mr.  Wood  as  scholar,  though  a  lover  of  learning.     He 
"  a  man  of  some  learning." — (MSS.)  could  appreciate  genius  without  feeling 

2  Dr.  Wood,  who  was  also  Ezekiel  its  fires  in  his  own  bosom.     By  his  un- 
Webster's  tutor,  and  afterward  his  pastor,  wearied  diligence  and  fidelity  he  suc- 
was  a  man  of  great  excellence  of  char-  ceeded  in  making  good  scholars.     He 
acter ;  "  distinguished,"  says  Professor  labored  from  principle — from  an  ever- 
Sanborn,  "  for  his  rare  Christian  virtues,  present  conviction  that  he  must  do  all 
He  was  one  of  the  excellent  of  the  earth,  within  his  power  to  benefit  the  rising 
During  his  long  and  successful  minis-  generation.    It  was  the  boast  and  glory 
try  at  Boscawen,  he  fitted  more  than  one  of  his  life  that  he  was  the  tutor  of 
hundred  young  men  for  college.    Those  Ezekiel  and  Daniel  Webster.    He  loved 
who  could  not  pay  the  debt,  he  trusted;  them  as  children;  they  honored  him  as 
and  to  some  very  indigent  pupils  he  for-  a  father." — (Correspondence,  i.,  35.) 
gave  the  debt.    He  was  not  an  eminent 


24  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  I. 

away,  I  walked  home,  and  asked  my  sister  Sally  if  she  did  not  want  to  go 
and  pick  some  whortleberries.  She  said  yes.  So  I  went  and  got  some 
horses,  and  put  a  side-saddle  on  one,  and  we  set  off.  We  did  not  get 
home  until  it  was  pretty  late,  and  I  soon  went  to  bed.  When  my  father 
came  home  he  asked  my  mother  where  I  was,  and  what  I  had  been  about. 
She  told  him.  The  next  morning,  when  I  awoke,  I  saw  all  the  clothes  I  had 
brought  from  Dr.  Wood's  tied  up  in  a  small  bundle  again.  When  I  saw 
my  father  he  asked  me  how  I  liked  haying.  I  told  him  I  found  it  '  pretty 
dull  and  lonesome  yesterday.'  '  Well,'  said  he,  '  I  believe  you  may  as  well 
go  back  to  Dr.  Wood's.'  So  I  took  my  bundle  under  my  arm,  and  on  my 
way  I  met  Thomas  W.  Thompson,  a  lawyer  in  Salisbury ;  he  laughed  very 
heartily  when  he  saw  me.  '  So,'  said  he,  '  your  farming  is  over,  is  it  ? '  "  * 

After  this  exploit  in  haying  and  picking  whortleberries, 
there  remained  but  six  weeks  in  which  to  finish  his  preparation 
for  college ;  and  it  appears  that  Dr.  "Wood  thought  it  expedi 
ent  to  have  some  assistance  for  his  Greek.  "  Well,  sir,"  con 
tinued  Mr.  Webster,  conversing  in  1825  about  his  early  life,  "  I 
went  to  Dr.  Wood's,  and,  as  my  father  had  consented  to  my 
going  to  college,  he  got  a  young  man  of  the  name  of  Palmer, 
a  senior  in  Dartmouth,  to  come  and  teach  me  Greek.  I  knew 
nothing  at  all  about  it,  and  I  had  just  six  weeks  to  prepare  in. 
But  I  went  to  work,  and  entered  in  '97,  when  I  was  fifteen." 

At  Boscawen  he  had  found  another  circulating  library,  and 
he  read  a  great  many  of  the  books  which  it  contained.  But  he 
mentions  one  only — "  Don  Quixote."  It  was  the  common 
translation,  and  in  an  edition  of  three  or  four  duodecimo  vol 
umes.  "I  began  to  read  it,"  he  says  in  the  autobiography, 
"  and  it  is  literally  true  that  I  never  closed  my  eyes  until  I 
had  finished  it ;  nor  did  I  lay  it  down,  so  great  was  the  power 
of  that  extraordinary  book  on  my  imagination." 

Such  was  the  youth  Daniel  Webster  when  he  entered  Dart 
mouth  College.  In  the  ancient  languages,  the  Latin  grammar, 
the  first  six  books  of  the  "  JEneid,"  Cicero's  four  Orations  against 
Catiline,  a  little  Greek  grammar,  and  the  four  Evangelists  of 
the  Greek  Testament,  were  his  whole  stock.  In  mathematics 
he  had  nothing  but  the  small  amount  of  arithmetic  which  he 
might  have  obtained  at  the  town-schools  and  at  Exeter.  Of 
geography  and  history  he  had  almost  nothing  but  what  he 

1 MSS.  account  of  a  drive  from  Boston  to  Salem,  in  1825,  preserved  by  Mr. 
Ticknor. 


1797.]  LOVE  OF  READING.  25 

had  picked  up  in  his  desultory  reading.  In  English  literature 
we  have  certain  knowledge  that  he  had  read  some  of  Addison's 
prose,  one  of  Pope's  larger  poems,  the  devotional  poetry  of  Dr. 
Watts,  and  a  translation  of  "  Don  Quixote."  I  have  sought 
diligently  to  find  the  earliest  period  at  which  he  first  knew 
any  thing  of  Milton  and  Shakespeare — poets  whose  imagery, 
sentiments,  language,  and  lines  became  afterward  so  inwrought 
with  his  intellectual  being  that  they  sprang  into  his  discourse, 
sometimes  in  unbidden  and  unconscious  quotation,  and  some 
times  with  a  purposed  use  of  riches  which  he  had  stored  in  one 
of  the  most  retentive  memories  ever  possessed  by  man.  But  I 
find  no  evidence  that  his  knowledge  of  Milton  and  Shakespeare 
began  at  this  early  age.  It  is  certain,  however,  that,  before  he 
went  to  Dartmouth,  he  must  have  had  some  miscellaneous 
reading  of  which  we  have  no  account.  That  he  read  every 
thing  he  could  get  to  read,  he  has  told  us ;  and,  although  the 
two  circulating  libraries,  which  came  within  his  reach,  at  Salis 
bury  and  at  Boscawen,  must  have  been  rather  meagre  collec 
tions,  we  may  safely  infer  that  he  devoured  whatever  he  could 
find  in  them  that  could  attract  a  lad  of  his  years.  For  he  tells 
us  :  "  In  those  boyish  days  there  were  two  things  which  I  did 
dearly  love,  viz.,  reading  and  playing — passions  which  did,  not 
cease  to  struggle  when  boyhood  was  over  (have  they  yet,  alto 
gether?)  and,  in  regard  to  which,  neither  cita  mors  nor  the 
victoria  laeta  could  be  said  of  either."  1 

1 "  home 

Memento  cita  mors  venit,  aut  victoria  laeta" 

HORACE,  Sat.  i.,  7,  8. 


26  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  II. 


CHAPTEK   II. 
1797-1801. 

COLLEGE  LIFE — BANK  AS  A   STUDENT — DEVELOPMENT  AND 
ACQUISITIONS. 

"\T7~E  now  enter  upon  a  period,  in  the  life  of  Mr.  Webster, 
V  V  through  which  it  is  necessary  to  move  with  careful  steps. 
The  extraordinary  elevation  to  which  he  rose  has  tended  to 
invest  his  college-life  with  an  uncommon  interest,  and  to  sur 
round  it  with  impressions  which,  however  pleasing  in  their 
apparent  conformity  with  what  he  afterward  became,  must  be 
examined  with  fidelity.  For  those  who  knew  him,  and  acted 
with  him  only  after  his  mind  was  in  its  full  maturity,  and 
those  who  knew  him  only  through  the  glory  of  his  vast  reputa 
tion,  could  not  well  conceive  that  there  ever  was  a  time,  after 
his  intellect  began  to  be  manifested  at  all  to  the  observation  of 
others,  when  it  was  not,  in  a  degree  corresponding  to  its  subse 
quent  exhibitions,  of  the  same  preeminent  qualities  and  powers. 
Thinking  and  speaking  of  him  as  a  prodigy,  such  as  Nature  can 
vouchsafe  but  once,  men  easily  believed  that,  at  all  times,  and 
in  every  period  of  his  existence,  he  must  have  stood  in  the  same 
relative  superiority  to  his  fellows,  in  which  they  saw  and  felt 
that  he  stood  when  they  could  compare  him  with  others  or 
themselves. 

It  is  well  known  that  there  have  been  those,  among  the  con 
temporaries  of  his  youth,  who  have  thought  that  his  future 
greatness  was  then  foreseen  and  predicted.  But  such  a  sug 
gestion,  even  in  regard  to  such  a  man,  may  challenge  a  dissent 


1797.]  COLLEGE  LIFE.  37 

that  springs  from  no  love  of  disparagement ;  and,  accordingly, 
there  have  been  others  who  lived  at  the  same  period,  and  in 
the  same  associations,  who  have  not  admitted  that,  at  col 
lege,  he  stood  in  all  respects  far  above  his  competitors,  and 
who  have  thought  it  unwise  to  hold  him  up  as  an  example 
of  mere  genius,  ascending  at  once  to  the  highest  pinnacles  of 
fame,  without  the  toil  and  the  patient  submission  to  routine, 
by  which  distinction  is  most  commonly  supposed,  and  should 
ordinarily  be  held,  to  be  best  achieved. 

The  purpose  of  biography  is,  or  should  be,  truth.  Eulogy 
and  praise  are  not  to  be  discarded  from  it,  if  they  can  rest 
on  solid  foundations.  But  such  foundations  must  be  explored 
without  preconceived  theories.  He  who  admits  into  his  descrip 
tions  of  a  great  man's  life  and  character  the  influence  of  any 
opinion  concerning  their  example,  or  who  is  anxious  about 
methods  of  education  or  the  best  means  of  self-culture,  admits 
into  his  office  that  which  will  not  be  unlikely  to  disturb  its  per 
formance.  As  little  should  there  be  an  effort  to  maintain  any 
favorite  idea  of  one's  own,  concerning  what  must  have  been 
the  early  intellectual  and  moral  development  of  a  man  like 
Daniel  Webster.  "We  do  not  know  enough  of  all  the  laws  that 
govern  the  growth  of  a  human  mind,  to  be  able  to  reason  back 
ward,  from  what  we  have  known  of  it  in  its  maturity,  to  the 
times  and  the  processes  through  which  it  began  to  approach  the 
perfect  stature  in  which  it  has  stood  before  us.  "We  can  no 
more  reason  in  this  way,  concerning  the  mind,  than  we  can  in 
regard  to  the  body.  Who  that  ever  saw  the  physical  frame  of 
this  man  in  the  middle  period  of  his  days — filled  with  life  and 
health,  as  capacious  of  labor  as  of  the  enjoyment  of  all  that 
the  senses  can  enjoy,  perfect  in  grace  and  dignity,  speaking  in 
every  motion  and  in  every  look  of  power  and  energy  and 
vitality — could  have  argued  from  it  back  to  his  earliest  years, 
and  have  found,  without  other  guide,  the  feeble  and  even  sickly 
childhood,  with  which  we  know  that  his  earthly  existence 
began  ?  In  the  history  of  the  mental,  as  of  the  physical  con 
stitution,  we  must  investigate  facts.  Evidence  is  to  be  carefully 
sifted  and  weighed ;  the  opinions  and  narrations  of  those  who 
are  competent  to  inform  us  must  be  examined  and  compared, 
and,  above  all,  if  he  whose  history  we  desire  fully  to  know  has 


28  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

left  us  his  own  testimony,  given  with  full  justice  to  others, 
and  with  no  undue  bias  toward  himself,  we  are  bound  to  regard 
it  as  of  great  weight,  in  forming  our  estimate  of  what  he  may 
have  been  at  a  period  so  remote  from  the  time  in  which  he  may 
have  spoken  or  written  concerning  his  early  life. 

In  the  case  of  Mr.  Webster,  there  is  strong  reason  for  relying 
on  his  own  statements  respecting  himself.  He  was  an  emi 
nently  just  man ;  and  he  never  was  accused  of  vanity.  He  was 
not  unconscious  of  what  he  was,  or  insensible  to  what  he  had  done 
in  the  world,  or  indifferent  about  his  reputation.  But  he  never 
sought  praise  at  the  expense  of  others,  whether  it  was  the  praise 
that  attends  the  exhibition  of  mere  talent,  or  that  which  fol 
lows  the  exhibition  of  mere  industry.  He  was  at  once  too 
grand  and  too  simple  in  his  nature  to  court  a  cheap  applause ; 
and,  in  speaking  of  himself  at  any  time,  or  about  any  time  in 
his  life,  if  he  ever  failed  in  impartiality,  he  erred  against  him 
self,  and  against  no  one  else.  One  thing  is  certainly  true  of 
him — and  it  is,  that,  in  his  opinions  respecting  the  means  by 
which  he  laid  the  foundation  of  his  extraordinary  success,  he 
always  gave  the  utmost  importance  to  the  amount  of  labor 
which  he  very  early  accustomed  himself  to  perform,  to  the 
power  of  labor  which  he  cultivated  and  increased  as  he  grew 
in  years,  and  to  the  command  which  it  gave  him  over  his  intel 
lectual  faculties.  It  would  have  been  the  last  thing  which  he 
could  ever  have  desired,  to  be  handed  down  to  posterity  as 
a  man  of  genius  who  never  needed  the  discipline  to  which 
common  minds  must  submit.  He  never  exhibited  any  of  that 
weakness  which  has  sometimes  led  men  of  the  highest  endow 
ments  to  conceal  their  preparation  for  particular  efforts  at  the 
bar,  or  in  the  senate,  or  which  has  craved,  at  the  expense  of 
probability  or  of  truth,  a  reputation  for  doing  great  things  out  of 
the  inspiration  of  the  moment.  Probably  few  men  have  ever 
lived  who  exceeded  Mr.  "Webster  in  the  power  of  immediately 
entering  on  the  discussion  of  an  important  subject  with  very 
little  previous  notice  of  the  duty  and  its  demands.  But,  when 
he  did  so,  he  drew  upon  stores  which  he  had  garnered  up  in 
his  intellectual  resources  for  years,  and  it  was  the  discipline 
of  years,  long  gone  by,  that  enabled  him  so  to  use  his  faculties 
as  to  bring  those  stores  instantly  to  the  uses  of  the  hour.  He 


1797.]  AMERICAN  COLLEGES.  29 

would  not  have  had  it  understood  to  be  otherwise.  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  he  was  never,  or  that  he  was  rarely,  indebted 
to  that  high  exaltation  of  the  intellect  which  comes  when  in 
the  presence  of  an  audience  the  mind  assumes  its  greatest  in 
tensity  of  action ;  which  clothes  a  syllogism  in  poetic  fire,  or 
adorns  a  train  of  reasoning  with  a  flow  of  eloquence,  more 
perfectly  than  all  that  study  or  the  closet  can  do.  No  great 
orator,  of  ancient  or  of  modern  times,  probably  felt  more  deeply, 
or  displayed  more  strikingly,  in  extemporaneous  discourse,  the 
effect  of  what  is  called  inspiration.  But  I  point  now  merely  to 
that  feature  of  his  character  which  made  him  entirely  free  from 
a  vulgar  appetite  for  unmerited  fame,  and  which  rendered  a 
false  pride,  in  respect  to  the  present  or  the  past,  a  stranger  to 
his  breast.  A  man  who  had  this  strength  and  this  moral  sim 
plicity  could  surely  speak,  in  his  manhood  or  in  his  age,  of  what 
he  was  at  fifteen  or  at  twenty,  in  a  way  that  renders  his  testi 
mony  of  inestimable  value  to  those  who  would  know  him  as 
he  was. 

There  are  some  other  general  observations  which  must  be 
made  before  the  narrative  of  his  college  life  proceeds,  because 
they  are  necessary  to  a  correct  understanding  of  the  kind  and 
degree  of  development  which  he  attained  at  Dartmouth. 

An  American  college  is  conducted,  in  some  respects,  differ 
ently  from  the  corresponding  institutions  in  most  parts  of 
Europe.  No  comparison  is  here  intended  to  be  drawn  in 
respect  to  the  advantages  of  different  systems  of  education,  but 
it  is  intended  merely  to  describe  the  kind  of  institution  at  which 
Mr.  "Webster  received  his  academic  education.  In  most  of  our 
colleges  there  is  a  curriculum,  or  prescribed  course  of  studies, 
in  the  ancient  and  modern  languages,  in  mathematics  and  the 
exact  sciences,  in  mental  and  moral  philosophy,  in  history,  in 
rhetoric,  and  in  some  other  branches.  In  these  the  student  is 
required  to  prepare  lessons,  and  to  attend  daily  examinations, 
which  are  called  "  recitations."  A  daily  record  is  kept  of  the 
performance  of  each  student  at  the  particular  recitation ;  and 
the  summary  of  this  record,  together  with  the  results  of  per 
sonal  deportment  and  punctuality  of  attendance  on  prescribed 
exercises,  determines  the  relative  rank  of  the  students,  and  their 
title  to  the  academic  honors  which  the  college,  in  its  official 


V 

30  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

capacity,  bestows.  Lectures  are  also  delivered  by  the  profes 
sors  in  their  several  departments,  some  of  which  the  students 
are  required  to  attend,  while  on  others  the  attendance  is  vol 
untary. 

In  addition  to  these  means  of  culture  and  discipline,  there 
are  others  furnished  by  the  college,  which  have  a  very  impor 
tant  influence  in  the  training  of  our  young  men.  Among  these 
are  the  public  "  declamations,"  which  take  place  before  the 
whole  college  at  stated  and  frequent  times,  and  in  which  each 
student  is  required  to  bear  his  part ;  the  "  exhibitions,"  which 
occur  at  certain  periods  in  the  college  course,  and  the  "  com 
mencement  "  exercises,  with  which  the  four  years  of  college  life 
terminate,  and  at  which  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts  is  con 
ferred  upon  each  student,  who  has  performed  the  college  course 
without  serious  dereliction,  and  without  incurring  the  neces 
sity  of  being  deprived  of  such  a  diploma  by  misconduct.  At 
the  exhibitions  and  the  commencement  exercises,  the  students, 
on  whom  the  distinction  falls,  by  the  award  of  the  College  Fac 
ulty,  deliver  their  own  compositions  in  the  form  of  orations  and 
addresses  in  English,  or  Greek,  or  Latin ;  and  these  appoint 
ments  constitute  the  college  honors  that  are  the  objects  of  com 
petition  among  the  young  men  who  contend  for  them.  The 
performances  are  delivered  upon  a  public  stage,  and  there  is 
always  a  public  audience  in  addition  to  the  faculty  and  mem 
bers  of  the  college. 

In  many  of  our  colleges,  also,  there  are  voluntary  societies 
among  the  students,  which  have  existed  for  a  long  time,  and 
which  are  conducted  with  great  spirit  and  emulation,  for  pur 
poses  of  general  culture  in  writing  and  speaking,  and  for  prac 
tice  in  the  art  of  debating.  Over  these  the  college  exercises  no 
official  control.  The  existence  and  operation  of  these  voluntary 
associations — which  are  often  carried  on  so  effectively  as  to  pro 
duce  an  important  influence  on  the  development  of  individuals, 
aside  from  all  that  part  of  education  of  which  the  college  takes 
official  cognizance — will  account  for  the  fact  that  a  young  man 
may  have  a  high  repute  among  his  fellows  for  talent  or  scholar 
ship,  and  may  yet  fail  to  achieve  the  highest  honors  of  his  col 
lege.  But  when  this  occurs,  it  will  almost  always  be  found  that 
he  who  enjoys  such  a  reputation  among  his  fellow-students  has 


1798.]  FRESHMAN  AND  SOPHOMORE.  31 

gained  it  on  account  of  his  acquirements  beyond  the  college 
course,  and  by  his  superiority  in  writing  and  debate ;  while 
he  who  wins  a  high  college  appointment,  wins  it  on  account  of 
his  exactness  in  the  recitation-room.  The  two  distinctions  are 
rarely  united  in  the  same  person. 

Dartmouth  College,  when  Mr.  Webster  entered  it,  was  such 
an  institution  as  I  have  above  described,  excepting  that  it  had 
no  provision  for  teaching  the  modern  languages,  and  that,  in 
the  mathematics  and  the  exact  sciences,  its  course  was  exceed 
ingly  meagre.1  When  young  Webster  was  fairly  entered  as  a 
Freshman,  his  class  went  on  with  the  seventh  book  of  the 
"^Eneid,"  and  with  the  remainder  of  the  Greek  Testament. 
The  studies  through  the  Freshman  and  Sophomore  years  con 
tinued  to  be  in  Latin  and  Greek,  with  Pike's  Arithmetic  and 
Algebra.  But  from  all  the  sources  of  information  that  are 
accessible,  it  seems  that  he  did  not  rise  into  immediate  and 
prominent  distinction  during  these  first  two  years  of  his  col 
lege  course.  He  was  a  good  scholar,  and  punctual  in  his  attend 
ance  on  all  exercises ;  but  it  appears,  on  the  testimony  of  one 
entitled  to  know,  that  he  was  not  spoken  of  at  this  time  as  the 
best  scholar  in  his  class,  or  indeed  that  any  one  else  was  so 
spoken  of;  and  the  estimation  in  which  the  College  Faculty 
held  him  at  this  period  is  proved  by  the  fact  that,  at  his  Sopho 
more  exhibition,  neither  of  the  two  principal  appointments  was 
assigned  to  him.3 

There  are  extant  a  few  verses  which  he  addressed  to  one  of 
his  college  friends,  George  Herbert,  as  a  farewell,  when  he  was 
leaving  the  college  for  the  winter  vacation  in  his  Sophomore 
year,  December,  1Y98.  They  exhibit  no  more  poetic  talent,  or 
power  of  versification,  or  vigor  of  mind,  than  any  lad  of  six 
teen  might  show  who  had  been  similarly  educated. 

But  there  is  a  striking  contrast  between  them  and  another 

1  Upon  this  Mr.  Ticknor  observes  :          2 1  state  these  facts  on  the  authority 

"  In  every  department,  when  Mr.  Web-  of  the  Rev.  T.  A.  Merrill,  D.  D.,  of  Mid- 

ster  was  at    Dartmouth,   the   teaching  dlebury,  Vermont,  who  was  one  of  his 

was  *  exceedingly  meagre.'    Pike's  Arith-  class-mates,  and  who,  in  1853,  soon  after 

metic  was  a  miserable  book.     I  doubt  Mr.  Webster's  death,  wrote  for  the  liter- 

whether  he  [Mr.  W.]  ever  dealt  with  ary  executors  quite  a  full  account  of  Mr. 

algebra."      But   Dr.   Merrill,   who  was  Webster's  college  history,   which  now 

Webster's  rival  for  the  college  honors,  lies  before  me  in  MSS. 
expressly  mentions  algebra. 


32  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

short  piece  written  and  addressed  to  the  same  friend,  a  little 
more  than  a  year  afterward.  The  latter  displays  a  great  advance 
in  his  power  of  expression  and  thought,  and,  if  the  verses  are,  as 
the  verses  of  most  youths  are,  somewhat  imitative,  they  do  not 
lack  the  elements  of  real  poetry.  Some  of  his  companions  then 
thought,  and  have  always  believed,  that  the  Muses  had  been 
lavish  of  their  gifts  to  him,  and  that  he  did  not  cultivate  them 
as  he  should  have  done.  But  the  truth  is,  in  respect  to  most  of 
his  rhymes  that  remain,  although  Nature  had  made  him,  in 
one  sense,  a  poet,  and  although  the  prose  of  his  whole  life  shows 
how  strong  were  his  imaginative  tendencies,  and  how  poetical 
his  gravest  eloquence  often  was,  there  is  nothing  that  can,  criti 
cally  speaking,  be  dignified  by  the  name  of  poetry.  Whenever 
he  wrote  any  thing  serious  in  the  form  of  verse,  during  his  col 
lege  life,  or  afterward,  he  was  accustomed  to  laugh  at  it ;  and 
when  he  wrote  any  thing  comic,  his  sense  of  the  ludicrous  was 
so  strong,  and  his  power  of  embodying  it  so  exuberant,  that  he 
made  others  laugh  with  him  as  heartily  as  he  did  himself.  But 
he  undoubtedly  possessed,  at  an  early  age,  a  faculty  of  descrip 
tion,  in  the  forms  of  verse,  akin  to  that  which  he  could  always 
use  with  wonderful  force  in  prose  composition  or  extemporane 
ous  speaking.  There  is  a  tradition  of  a  poem  which  he  read  in 
his  junior  year,  on  a  battle  between  an  English  and  a  French 
ship-of-war,  in  which  the  latter  was  sunk,  "  that  held  the  pro 
fessor  and  the  class,"  says  one  who  heard  it,  "  in  apparent 
amazement.  I  almost  shudder,"  continues  his  class-mate,  "  as, 
fifty-four  years  after,  I  seem  to  see  the  French  ship  go  down, 
and  to  hear  her  cannon  continue  to  roar  till  she  is  absolutely 
submerged."  1 

But  not  to  anticipate  the  two  later  and  most  important 
years  of  his  residence  at  Dartmouth,  the  reader  must  now  go 
home  with  him  to  the  paternal  roof,  at  the  spring  vacation,  in 
May,  1799,  during  his  Sophomore  year ;  for  it  was  then  that  a 
domestic  episode  occurred  in  his  life,  which  affected  it  through 
many  a  long  year  of  generous  and  manly  resistance  against  the 
ills  of  poverty. 

The  affection  that  had  existed  between  Ezekiel  and  Daniel 
"Webster,  from  their  childhood,  was  such  as  even  brothers  who 

1  Dr.  Merrill's  MSS. 


1799.]  EZEKIEL  WEBSTER.  33 

are  nearly  of  an  age  rarely  feel.  Whether  it  was  that  the 
younger  had,  from  infancy,  stood  more  than  commonly  in  need 
of  the  strong  protection  of  the  older  and  stouter  boy,  or  whether 
it  was  the  effect  of  companionship  operating  upon  natures  with 
whom  "blood  was  thicker  than  water"  to  a  degree  not  often 
exceeded  in  the  family  tie,  they  loved  each  other,  until  death 
divided  them,  as  men  seldom  do  or  can.  They  were  the  sons 
of  an  old  man,  who  had  become,  to  repeat  his  own  homely  but 
strong  expression,  "  old  before  his  time  ; "  children  of  his 
age,  and  probably  the  first  of  his  children  who  had  given  much 
promise  of  future  usefulness,  as  Daniel  was  certainly  the  first 
of  his  sons  for  whom  he  thought  himself  called  to  afford  the 
means  of  education.  The  reader  already  knows  the  plan  which 
he  had  formed  for  his  declining  years.  Ezekiel  was  to  remain 
at  home,  and  carry  on  the  farm ;  Daniel  was  to  be  educated 
for  one  of  the  learned  professions.  But  as  the  ample  page  of 
knowledge  began  to  unfold  itself  before  the  eyes  of  the  young 
student,  and  he  saw  the  wide  gulf  that  was  to  open  between  him 
self  and  his  elder  brother,  his  heart  was  moved.  He  believed 
that  Ezekiel's  talents  were  as  good  as  his  own,  and  he  could 
not  bear  to  think  of  him  as  destined  to  an  inferior  lot  in  life. 
When  he  came  home  for  the  vacation,  he  found  that  his  brother 
felt  the  unpromising  character  of  his  prospects,  and  that  there 
was  a  struggle  between  duty  to  his  parents  and  the  aspirations 
of  a  really  superior  mind.  Daniel  was  unhappy  about  this 
state  of  things.  He  had  a  consultation  with  his  brother,  after 
they  had  gone  to  bed,  which  lasted  through  the  whole  night, 
and  until  after  sunrise,  neither  of  them  having  shut  his  eyes. 
Mr.  Webster  says  of  his  brother,  in  the  autobiography : 

"  He  had  thought  of  going  into  some  new  part  of  the  country.  That 
was  discussed  and  disagreed  to.  All  the  pros  and  cons  of  the  question 
of  remaining  at  home  were  weighed  and  considered,  and,  when  our 
council  broke  up,  or  rather  got  up,  its  result  was  that  I  should  pro 
pose  to  my  father  that  he,  late  as  it  was,  should  be  sent  to  school  also, 
and  to  college.  This,  we  knew,  would  be  a  trying  thing  to  my  father  and 
mother  and  two  unmarried  sisters.  My  father  was  growing  old,  his  health 
not  good,  and  his  circumstances  far  from  easy.  The  farm  was  to  be 
carried  on,  and  the  family  taken  care  of;  and  there  was  nobody  to  do  all 
this  but  him,  who  was  regarded  as  the  main  stay — that  is  to  say,  Ezekiel. 
However,  I  ventured  on  the  negotiation,  and  it  was  carried,  as  other  things 
4 


34  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

often,  are,  by  the  earnest  and  sanguine  manner  of  youth.  I  told  him  that  I 
was  unhappy  at  my  brother's  prospects.  For  myself,  I  saw  my  way  to 
knowledge,  respectability,  and  self-protection ;  but,  as  to  him,  all  looked 
the  other  way ;  that  I  would  keep  school,  and  get  along  as  well  as  I  could, 
be  more  than  four  years  in  getting  through  college,  if  necessary,  provided 
he  also  could  be  sent  to  study.  He  said  at  once  he  lived  but  for  his 
children ;  that  he  had  but  little,  and  on  that  little  he  put  no  value,  except 
so  far  as  it  might  be  useful  to  them.  That  to  carry  us  both  through  col 
lege  would  take  all  he  was  worth  ;  that,  for  himself,  he  was  willing  to  run 
the  risk ;  but  that  this  was  a  serious  matter  to  our  mother  and  two  unmar 
ried  sisters  ;  that  we  must  settle  the  matter  with  them,  and,  if  their  con 
sent  was  obtained,  he  would  trust  to  Providence,  and  get  along  as  well  as 
he  could." 

All  was  now  referred,  therefore,  to  the  decision  of  the 
mother ;  and  her  decision  involved  the  family  means  for  her 
whole  remaining  life,  and  for  the  lives  of  her  unmarried 
daughters.  Her  husband  told  her  that  the  farm  was  already 
mortgaged  to  meet  the  expenses  of  Daniel's  education;  and 
that  if  Ezekiel,  too,  were  sent  to  college,  it  would  take  all  that 
they  had.  Her  answer  was  ready :  "  Well,"  said  she,  "  I  will 
trust  the  boys."  l 

Perhaps  there  is  nowhere  a  tablet  in  the  Temple  of  Fame, 
on  which  any  thing  more  touching  than  this  act  of  maternal 
heroism  has  been  or  can  be  inscribed.  Thenceforward  there 
was  a  long  period  of  anxiety  and  privation  for  all  of  them. 
But  its  compensations  came.  The  father  lived  to  know  that 
his  sons  were  to  take  their  places  among  the  most  honored  of 
their  native  State.  The  mother  lived  longer,  to  behold  the 
opening  of  that  great  career  which  was  before  the  younger, 
and  to  find  repose  and  every  comfort  in  the  house  of  her  elder 
son.  The  sisters  lived  to  find  how  safe  had  been  their  reliance 
on  fraternal  gratitude  and  honor.  On  the  early  grave,  there 
fore,  to  "which  one  of  these  brothers  went  suddenly  down,  in  the 
prime  of  a  useful  and  honorable,  although  a  less  distinguished 
life,  and  on  the  tomb  in  which  the  other,  when  full  of  years  and 
honors,  and  with  all  the  renown  that  a  statesman  can  reap,  was 
laid  by  a  mourning  nation,  it  should  be  written  that  a  mother's 
sagacious  faith  in  the  future  of  her  sons  supplied  to  a  father's 
courage  all  that  was  needed  for  one  of  the  largest  parental 

1  MS.  notes,  by  Mrs.  Ticknor,  of  Mr.  Webster's  conversation,  in  1825. 


1799.]  EZEKIEL  WEBSTER.  35 

sacrifices  that  the  lives  of  educated  men,  in  any  country,  have 
ever  had  to  show. 

Perhaps  the  reader  may  now  think  that  the  question  of 
Daniel  Webster's  exact  rank  as  a  college  student  has  sunk  into 
insignificance.  Here  was  a  youth,  scarcely  more  than  seventeen 
years  of  age,  so  strong  in  fraternal  affection,  so  firm  in  his  self- 
reliance,  so  capable  of  looking  forward  to  estimate  the  future 
for  his  brother  and  himself,  that  he  could  tell  his  aged  father 
that  he  would  assume  the  burdens  that  this  great  sacrifice  was 
to  cast  upon  the  family.  We  are  concerned,  in  this  investiga 
tion  of  his  life,  with  the  growth  of  character,  as  well  as  with  the 
growth  of  his  mind,  or  his  acquisitions  of  knowledge ;  and  when 
we  go  back  with  him  to  his  college,  we  are  to  remember  that, 
although  a  boy  in  years,  in  moral  stature  he  is  already  a  man. 
He  might  have,  it  is  known  that  he  did  have,  other  methods  of 
discipline,  other  objects  of  ambition,  other  desires  for  knowl 
edge,  than  those  which  were  limited  or  satisfied  by  the  aca 
demic  prizes.  He  began  to  fight  the  great  battle  of  life  almost 
before  the  down  was  upon  his  lip ;  and  if  he  fought  it  in  his 
own  way,  or  chose  his  weapons  for  himself,  or  burnished  his 
armor  more  variously  than  his  comrades,  it  was  because  the 
responsibility  of  the  contest  had  come  upon  him  so  early,  and 
so  gravely ;  and  because  Nature  had  given  him  the  strength, 
and  pointed  him  the  way. 

Ezekiel  Webster,  who  was  at  the  age  of  nineteen  when  the 
consent  of  his  parents  was  given  to  the  plan  for  his  education, 
immediately  began  to  attend  a  small  academy,  then  recently 
established,  in  Salisbury.  He  remained  at  this  school  for  two 
terms,  and  then  went  to  reside  with  Dr.  Wood,  with  whom  his 
preparation  for  college  was  finished.  "  His  intellectual  char 
acter,"  his  brother  informs  us,  "  as  it  afterward  developed  itself, 
was  not  early  understood,  at  least  not  in  its  full  extent.  He 
was  thought  to  have  good  sense,  but  not  to  have,  and  perhaps 
had  not,  great  quickness  of  apprehension."  1  He  was  at  first 
distrustful  of  himself,  and  appears  to  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
writing  to  Daniel,  as  if  the  latter,  with  superior  powers,  and 
earlier  advantages,  could  not  appreciate  what  he  had  to  con 
tend  with.  Daniel  would  never  admit  that  his  brother  was  his 

1  Autobiography. 


36  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  II. 

inferior  in  natural  abilities.  It  is  singular  to  see  the  order  of 
ISTature  thus  reversed  in  their  relative  situations,  and  to  find  the 
younger  generously  and  judiciously  performing  the  duties  of 
mentor  to  the  elder.  "  You  tell  me,"  writes  Daniel,  "  that  you 
have  difficulties  to  encounter  which  I  know  nothing  of.  "What 
do  you  mean,  Ezekiel  ?  Do  you  mean  to  flatter  ?  That  don't 
become  you ;  or  do  you  think  you  are  inferior  to  me  in  natural 
abilities  ?  If  so,  be  assured  you  greatly  mistake.  Therefore, 
for  the  future,  say  in  your  letters  to  me,  ;  I  am  superior  to  you 
in  natural  endowments ;  I  will  know  more  in  one  year  than  you 
do  now,  and  more  in  six  than  you  ever  will.'  I  should  not 
resent  this  language.  I  should  be  very  wrell  pleased  in  hearing 
it ;  but  be  assured,  as  mighty  as  you  are,  your  great  puissance 
shall  never  insure  you  a  victory  without  a  contest." 

Ezekiel  was  certainly  not  the  equal  of  Daniel  at  any  period 
of  their  lives  ;  but  he  was  a  man  of  fine  intellect,  and,  notwith 
standing  all  the  difficulties  with  which  he  had  to  contend,  he 
entered  Dartmouth  College  in  March,  1801,  six  months  before 
his  brother  was  graduated,  so  well  prepared,  and  with  such 
admirable  habits  of  study,  that  he  immediately  took,  and 
always  retained,  so  long  as  he  could  remain  at  the  college,  a 
high  rank  in  his  class.2  His  father's  means  were  from  the  first 
inadequate  to  meet  the  expenses  of  both  his  and  Daniel's  educa 
tion.  But  the  compact  which  had  been  made  at  the  family 
altar  came  at  once  into  operation.  Daniel  was  now  able  to 
earn  a  little  more  than  he  needed  to  spend.  He  superintended 
a  small  weekly  newspaper,  printed  in  Hanover,  and  called  The 
Dartmouth  Gazette ,  during  the  year  1800,  which  was  his  junior 
year.  What  he  received  for  this  literary  service  paid  his  own 
board  for  the  year,  and  so  far  relieved  the  family  burdens.  In 
the  winter  vacation  of  the  same  year,  he  taught  a  school  in 
Salisbury,  and  the  money  thus  earned  helped  to  defray  Ezekiel's 
expenses  at  Dr.  Wood's.  This  was  the  beginning  of  that  remark 
able  struggle,  which  lasted  for  several  years,  and  through  which 

1  Letter  to  E.  Webster,  April  25, 1800.     1857.     It  will  give  the  reader  some  idea 
— (Correspondence,  i.,  83.)  of  that  beloved  brother,  whose  name  Mr. 

2  In  Mr.  Webster's    Correspondence,    Webster  desired    might    be  associated 
vol.  i.,  p.  31,  there  is  an  account  of  Eze-    with  his  own,  so  long  as  his  own  might 
kiel  Webster's  college  reputation  written    endure. 

by  his  son-in-law,  Professor  Sanborn,  in 


1799.]  EARLY  ORATORY.  37 

these  brothers  mutually  aided  each  other  by  turns,  until  both 
had  acquired  the  profession  of  their  choice  ;  for,  as  Mr.  Webster 
once  humorously  expressed  their  frequent  interchange  of  study 
and  of  labor  for  their  joint  support,  as  they  had  but  one  horse 
between  them,  they  "  rode  in  tie."  1 

On  his  return  to  the  college,  after  the  spring  vacation  of 
1799,  Daniel  appears  to  have  entered  upon  the  discipline  of  his 
powers  of  communication,  and  to  have  developed  them  with 
great  rapidity.  For  this,  the  society  long  known  in  that  in 
stitution  as  "  The  United  Fraternity,"  afforded  him  all  the 
needful  facilities.  He  became  at  once  distinguished  as  a  de 
bater,  and,  before  the  close  of  his  junior  year,  he  was  accounted 
by  far  the  best  writer  and  speaker  in  the  college.  The  compass 
and  force  of  his  arguments,  in  extemporaneous  discussion,  were 
acknowledged  by  all  who  had  the  opportunity  of  hearing  him 
in  his  society.  He  manifested,  then,  in  kind,  the  same  com 
pleteness  and  fulness  in  his  views,  and  the  same  power  of 
expressing  them,  which  he  displayed  through  life.  Although 
not  required  to  do  so,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  writing  his  own 
declamations  for  the  college  stage.  "  He  was  accustomed," 
said  one  of  his  class-mates,  "  to  arrange  his  thoughts  in  his 
mind,  in  his  room  or  his  private  walks,  and  to  put  them  upon 
paper  just  before  the  exercise  was  called  for.  When  he  was 
required  to  speak  at  two  o'clock,  he  would  frequently  begin  to 
write  after  dinner,  and,  when  the  bell  rang,  he  would  fold  his 
paper,  put  it  in  his  pocket,  and  go  in,  and  speak  with  great 
ease.  In  his  movements,  he  was  rather  slow  and  deliberate, 
except  when  his  feelings  were  aroused ;  then  his  whole  soul 
would  kindle  into  a  flame." a  Indeed,  the  testimony  of  all  who 
were  living  at  the  time  of  Mr.  Webster's  death,  and  who  had 
been  with  him  at  Dartmouth,  is  uniform  on  this  point :  "  We 
used  to  listen  to  him,"  said  another  of  them,  "  with  the  deepest 
interest  and  respect,  and  no  one  ever  thought  of  equalling  the 
vigor  and  flow  of  his  eloquence." 3 

That  he  carried  on  courses  of  reading  and  study,  adapted  to 

*A   New  -  England    phrase,    which  fessor  Sanborn. — (Correspondence,  i.,  46.) 
means  that  two  people,  who  have  but  Written  from  Pomfret,  in  Vermont,  No- 
one  animal  between  them,  alternately  vember  10,  1852. 
ride  and  walk.  3  Hon.  Henry  Hubbard,  ex-Governor 

2  Letter  by  Mr.  Elihu  Smith,  to  Pro-  of  New  Hampshire. — (Correspondence,  i.) 


38  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

the  training  which  he  sought  to  give  himself,  is  equally  well 
authenticated.  He  did  not  neglect  the  college  studies,  but  he 
went  beyond  them.  He  mastered  any  subject  or  book  as  if  by 
intuition.  He  gave  himself  especially  to  history,  in  pursuing 
which  he  burnt  the  lamp  to  very  late  hours.1  He  studied  poli 
tics  as  few  young  men  of  the  same  age  have  ever  studied  them.2 
There  are  passages  in  his  letters,  written  at  this  time  (1800), 
which  show  how  closely  he  observed,  and  how  deeply  he  was 
affected,  by  what  was  then  taking  place  in  Europe.  Observa 
tions  and  reflections,  that  might  have  flowed  from  his  pen  at 
any  age,  are  to  be  found  scattered  through  his  college  cor 
respondence.  It  was  at  the  period,  when  Bonaparte,  for 
example,  had  just  returned  from  Egypt,  and  the  colossal 
power,  which  he  had  grasped  as  soon  as  he  had  reached  Paris, 
began  to  overshadow  even  this  distant  republic,  agitated  as  it 
had  been  by  sympathies  with  the  French  Kevolution,  that  had 
prepared  the  way  for  his  ascent  to  a  despotic  throne,  and  his 
attempt  at  universal  dominion.  This  young  American  student 
saw  it,  and  comprehended  it  in  its  relations  to  his  own  country. 
He  had  been  bred  up  at  home,  in  the  school  of  what  was  called 
the  Federal  party,  and  had  been,  therefore,  predisposed  to  the 
"Washingtonian  policy  of  keeping  the  interests  of  this  country  free 
from  entanglements  with  European  politics.  But  after  making 
every  allowance  for  the  effects  of  early  education  and  home 
influences,  when  we  read  in  the  letters  of  a  young  student  of 
eighteen,  a  junior  undergraduate  in  Dartmouth  College,  that 
he  understood  the  dangers  to  which  his  country  was  exposed, 
through  her  necessary  commercial  relations ;  that  he  saw  how 
essential  to  her  safety  was  internal  harmony,  and  that  her 
liberties  could  be  made  the  sport  of  European  powers,  only 
when  "  American  blood  shall  be  made  to  flow  in  rivers  by 
American  swords,"  we  may  recognize  whose  youth  it  was,  that 
began  thus  early  and  fervently  to  pray  that  "  the  bonds  of  the 
Federal  Union  might  be  strengthened." 

1  Dr.  Merrill.     MSS.  ambition,  and  the  fate  of  republicanism 

8  Among  the  books  which  he  read  at  in  Europe,  may  be  seen  in  one  of  his  let- 

this  time,  there  was  one  which  deeply  ters   to  a  college  friend,  to  whom  he 

affected  him — Mallet  du  Pan's  "  History  poured  forth   the   feelings    excited  by 

of  the  Destruction  of  the  Helvetic  Union."  what  had  befallen   Switzerland. — (Cor- 

What  this  revealed  to  him  of  French  respondence,  i.,  81.) 


1800.]  EULOGY  ON  A  CLASS-MATE.  39 

His  reputation  in  the  college  and  its  neighborhood,  as  a 
writer  and  speaker,  led  the  people  of  the  town  of  Hanover  to 
invite  him  to  deliver  an  oration  on  the  4th  of  July,  1800. 
This,  which  was  his  first  public  performance,  was  printed.  As 
might  be  expected,  it  shows,  in  style  and  expression,  marks  of 
the  unripe  taste  of  a  youth  of  eighteen ;  but,  in  power  of  thought, 
and  strong  grasp  of  the  subject,  it  gives  no  uncertain  promise 
of  the  productions  of  a  later  period.  The  oration  begins 
with  a  rapid  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  country,  closing  with 
the  glorious  success  of  the  Revolution.  Several  of  the  soldiers 
of  the  Revolution  were  present,  who  were  addressed  in  terms 
of  glowing  admiration  and  gratitude.  Many  of  the  deceased 
patriots  of  the  Revolution  were  commemorated,  and  the  loss 
which  the  country  had  recently  sustained,  in  the  death  of 
Washington,  was  lamented  in  two  or  three  paragraphs  of  some 
what  high-flown  language,  such,  however,  as  older  speakers  in 
those  days  were  very  apt  to  use.  The  closing  paragraphs  were 
strongly  Federal  in  their  tone,  full  of  denunciation  of  France 
and  of  Bonaparte,  whom  the  young  orator  calls  "  the  gascon 
ading  pilgrim  of  Egypt."  The  faults  of  the  discourse  are  such 
as  an  audience,  in  sympathy  with  its  sentiments,  would  easily 
overlook  ;  and  it  was,  doubtless,  heard  with  enthusiastic  favor. 

There  is  one  other  of  Mr.  Webster's  college  productions, 
which  was  printed  at  the  time.  This  was  a  eulogy  pronounced 
at  the  funeral  of  his  class-mate,  Simonds,  who  died  at  Hanover, 
in  June  of  their  senior  year.  There  is,  perhaps,  nothing  that 
so  profoundly  moves  a  band  of  college  youths  as  the  death  of  a 
class-mate,  especially  if  it  take  place  at  the  institution.  In  such 
a  closely-united  circle  of  generous  arid  aspiring  young  men,  in 
the  morning  of  life,  Death  seems  to  come  with  an  especial  shock ; 
and  if  his  shaft  is  aimed  at  one  who  has  given  more  than  ordi 
nary  promise,  and  is  more  than  usually  beloved,  there  will  be, 
inevitably,  from  the  nature  of  the  emotions  excited,  more  than 
from  any  desire  to  ape  the  customs  of  the  larger  and  older 
world,  an  expression  of  what  is  felt,  in  the  formal  funeral  ora 
tion,  or  other  ceremony  of  that  kind.  The  case  of  Simonds, 
excepting  in  the  circumstances  of  his  death,  was  just  such  a  one 
as  that  of  which  Landor  afterward  said,  all  that  can  be  said  in 
such  cases,  when  he  wrote  the  beautiful  epitaph,  in  five  words 


40  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

of  his  masterly  Latin,  over  the  poor  Oxford  scholar,  who  had 
wandered  out  in  the  fields,  and  died  of  exhaustion  : 

"  Literarum  quaesivit  gloriam, 
Dei  videt." 

This  is  what  young  Webster  was  appointed  to  say  over  his 
class-mate  Simonds,  and  what  he  did  in  substance  say,  in  the 
more  expanded  form  of  'a  public  eulogy.  I  know  of  but  one 
copy  now  in  existence.  It  is  natural,  unaffected,  full  of  feel 
ing,  and  of  a  strong  religious  faith.  It  is  not,  in  my  judgment, 
open  to  the  criticism  which  he  afterward  made  upon  his 
printed  college  performances,  of  being  in  "  bad  taste "  in 
respect  to  its  style.  Of  course,  it  has  not  the  same  sim 
plicity  which  he  afterward  reached ;  there  are  words  which 
he  would  have  expunged,  and  sentences  which  he  would  not 
have  constructed  ten  years  afterward.  But  it  might,  if  he  had 
chosen  to  have  it  so,  have  been  seen  by  the  world  at  any 
period  of  his  life,  as  a  not  unworthy  forerunner  of  his  more 
mature  productions,  for  it  is  marked  throughout  by  the  eleva 
tion  of  thought,  as  well  as  the  tenderness  of  feeling,  that 
belonged  to  his  character.1 

The  reader  is  now  prepared  to  understand  what  was  his 
relative  position  as  a  scholar  when  he  approached  the  termina 
tion  of  his  college  career.  He  was  not  the  first  scholar  in  his 
class,  as  the  faculty,  by  their  rules,  were  obliged  to  account 
scholarship  on  the  college  records ;  but  he  was  the  most  promi 
nent  person  in  the  college  in  respect  to  general  attainments ; 
and,  as  an  orator,  he  had  no  equal.  How,  then,  it  will  be 
asked,  did  it  happen  that  he  took  no  part  in  the  Commence 
ment  exercises  ?  And  why  does  he  say — in  mentioning  in  his 

1  The  copy  of  this  eulogy,  which  I  and  rather  sternly  toward  me,  and  said  : 
have  seen,  belongs  to  Mr.  Ticknor.  "  In  *  Have  you  ?  I  thought,  till  lately,  that, 
1820,"  says  Mr.  Ticknor,  "  I  happened  to  as  only  a  few  copies  of  it  were,  printed, 
dine  with  Mr.  Webster  at  his  own  house,  they  must  all  have  been  destroyed  long 
while  the  convention,  to  revise  the  Con-  ago  ;  but,  the  other  day,  Bean,  who  was 
stitution  of  Massachusetts,  of  which  he  in  college  with  me,  told  me  he  had  one. 
was  the  leading  member,  was  in  session ;  It  flashed  through  my  mind  that  it  must 
and,  sitting  next  to  him  after  dinner,  I  have  been  the  last  copy  in  the  world, 
told  him,  in  the  course  of  conversation,  and  that  if  he  had  it  in  his  pocket  it 
that  I  had  recently  found  among  some  would  be  worth  while  to  kill  him,  to  de- 
old  pamphlets  a  copy  of  the  oration  stroy  it  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  So  I 
which  he  delivered  in  his  senior  year  on  recommend  you  not  to  bring  your  copy 
the  death  of  his  class-mate  Simonds.  He  where  I  am.'  " — (MSS.  JRecollections  of 
looked  surprised,  and  turned  suddenly,  Mr.  Webster,  by  Mr.  Ticknor.) 


1801.]  COLLEGE  HONORS.  41 

autobiography  that  this  was  "owing  to  some  difficulties" — 
"  haeo  non  meminisse  juvat  f  " 

The  circumstances  which  he  did  not  think  it  worth  while  to 
recall  are  now  before  me,  clearly  related  by  one  of  his  class 
mates,  who  remained  at  the  college  as  a  tutor  for  three  years 
after  he  was  graduated,  and  who  therefore  had  full  means  of 
knowing  both  sides  of  the  affair,  the  views  of  the  faculty,  and 
the  feelings  of  the  class.  From  his  narrative  I  abridge  the 
following  statement : 

In  the  arrangements  of  the  faculty,  the  four  principal 
appointments  had  long  been  ranked  as  follows — the  Salutatory 
Oration,  in  Latin,  as  the  first ;  the  Philosophic,  in  English,  as 
the  second ;  a  Greek  Oration,  as  the  third ;  and  the  Valedictory, 
in  English,  as  the  fourth.  It  was  their  practice  to  assign  the 
first  three,  and  then  to  call  upon  the  class  to  choose  the  Vale 
dictory  Orator.  It  was  understood  by  the  class  that,  in  other 
colleges,  the  Valedictory  was  regarded  as  the  first  in  rank  of 
all  the  appointments.  This  circumstance,  and  the  fact  that 
the  class  expected  to  make  the  appointment,  would  lead  a 
young  man  of  "Webster's  accomplishments  and  popularity  to 
prefer  it ;  and  the  class  would  have  preferred  that  he  should 
have  it.  But  previous  classes  had  quarrelled  so  seriously  in 
choosing  the  Valedictory  Orator,  that  the  faculty  determined 
to  make  this  appointment  themselves.  Webster's  rank  as  a 
scholar,  in  the  estimate  which  the  faculty  felt  obliged  to  make, 
did  not  entitle  him  to  the  Latin  Oration,  notwithstanding  his 
relative  proficiency  in  that  language ;  at  the  same  time  he  stood 
too  high  upon  the  record  to  make  it  proper  for  them  to  appoint 
him  to  the  Valedictory,  which,  for  this  occasion,  they  ranked  as 
the  fifth  of  the  academic  honors.  There  was,  too,  an  obvious 
unfitness  in  making  a  young  man,  who  was  so  impressive  a 
speaker  in  his  own  tongue,  pronounce  a  public  performance  in 
a  dead  language ;  while  the  habits  and  policy  of  the  college 
made  it  necessary  to  give  an  honorable  precedence  to  Latin  and 
Greek.  Accordingly,  the  faculty  undertook  to  solve  the  diffi 
culty,  by  offering  to  Webster  a  choice  of  a  poem  in  English  or 
an  oration  in  English  on  the  fine  arts;  and  they  gave  the 
Valedictory  to  another  member  of  the  class,  not  suspecting  that 
Webster  and  his  friends  would  not  be  gratified.  But  a  poem 


42  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

had  never  ranked  with  the  first  four  appointments,  and  if  Web 
ster  had  selected  in  place  of  it  the  English  oration  which  was 
offered  to  his  choice,  he  would,  by  his  own  act,  have  placed 
himself  second  on  the  list  of  the  college  honors.  This  dilemma 
the  faculty  did  not  foresee,  or  did  not  appreciate. 

As  not  unfrequently  happens  on  these  occasions,  a  great 
excitement  followed  among  the  members  of  the  class.  Several 
of  them  applied  to  be  excused  from  speaking  on  the  day  of  Com 
mencement,  and  were  excused.  "Webster  was  one  of  them.  His 
friends  did  not  claim  that  he  was  entitled  to  the  Latin  Oration ; 
but  they  had  marked  him  for  their  Yaledictory  Orator,  and  con 
sidered  themselves  aggrieved  by  the  refusal  of  the  faculty  to 
intrust  them  with  the  appointment,  according  to  an  established 
usage.  "Webster  himself  was  placed  in  too  embarrassing  a  posi 
tion  toward  his  competitors  to  allow  of  his  exercising  the  choice 
which  the  faculty  had  given  him.  Apparently  he  had  no  other 
feeling  about  the  whole  affair,  for  I  find  no  trace  in  his  corre 
spondence  of  any  bitterness  toward  the  faculty  or  any  one  else  ; 
and  his  attachment  to  his  Alma  Mater,  which  never  flagged, 
became  historical,  inspiring  one  of  the  grandest  of  his  forensic 
efforts,  when  he  was  called  upon,  in  less  than  twenty  years  after 
ward,  to  defend  her  interests  and  her  chartered  rights  before  the 
highest  judicial  tribunal  in  the  country. 

It  is  well  observed  by  the  gentleman,  whose  narrative  I  have 
followed,  that  the  whole  matter  turns  to  Webster's  honor,  if  he 
did  nothing  improper  himself;  and  it  is  therefore  incumbent  on 
me  to  state  that  there  is  no  foundation  for  the  story  of  his 
having  destroyed  his  diploma  in  disgust  and  anger  after  the 
Commencement  exercises  were  over.  If  this  rumor  ever  had  so 
much  origin  as  to  be  a  college  tradition,  it  is  refuted  by  evi 
dence  that  ought  to  be  regarded  as  decisive ;  for  it  is  certain 
that  it  was  not  heard  of  at  Dartmouth  at  the  time,  or  for  several 
years  afterward.1 

The  friendships  which  he  formed,  when  in   college,  with 

1  Dr.   Merrill,  his  class  -  mate,  from  intimate  friend  and  correspondent,  and 

whose  account  I  have  taken  the  facts  re-  continued  to  reside  at  the  college  for 

specting  the  appointments,  says  of  this  three  years,  but  never  heard  of  the  story 

story :  "  I  never  believed  it,  and  probably  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century." 

never  shall  believe  it,  unless  some  per-  (MSS.)    The  Rev.  Elihu  Smith,  another 

son  reports  it  directly  from  Webster  him-  of  his  class-mates,  said:   "I  have  no 

self,  as  one  of  the  witnesses.    I  was  an  doubt  the  report  is  false.    I  stood  by 


1801.]  COLLEGE  FRIENDS.  43 

some  of  the  members  of  Ms  own  class,  and  with  two  or  three 
young  men  who  were  in  other  classes,  were  peculiarly  strong, 
and  lasted  through  his  life.  But  perhaps  my  readers  may  be 
curious  to  know  what  associations  he  had  with  young  persons 
of  the  other  sex,  and  whether  his  heart,  at  this  susceptible 
period,  remained  wholly  his  own.  There  was  a  small  society 
of  young  ladies  in  Hanover,  during  his  junior  and  senior  years, 
with  whom  he  and  his  college  friends  were  on  terms  of  intimacy. 
They  appear,  however,  in  his  correspondence  by  their  Christian 
names  alone ;  and  probably  no  diligence  on  my  part,  if  I  were 
to  use  it,  after  the  lapse  of  sixty-five  years,  to  acquire  further 
information  concerning  them,  would  be  rewarded  with  much 
success.1  But  there  was  gayety  in  the  little  town  of  Hanover  in 
those  days,  of  that  modest  and  moderate  sort  which  consisted  with 
the  habits  of  a  seat  of  learning,  and  of  a  religious  community. 
An  evening  visit,  or  a  social  tea-table,  a  walk,  or  a  drive,  were 
matters  of  course ;  and  young  women  could  converse  with  young 
men  without  the  necessary  presence  of  a  superintending  eye  or 
ear,  because  the  young  of  both  sexes,  from  the  very  purity  of 
the  atmosphere  in  which  they  were  born  and  educated,  and  had 
always  dwelt,  were  fit  to  be  intrusted  in  a  large  degree  with 
their  own  conduct.  Hence  it  has  often  happened  among 
us  that  the  tenderest  and  most  enduring  of  all  ties  have 
been  formed  by  our  educated  men  at  a  very  early  age  ; 
and,  however  strangely  it  may  sound  elsewhere,  it  has 
been  no  uncommon  occurrence,  in  all  parts  of  our  country, 
for  a  young  man  to  leave  college  with  his  destiny  fixed  in 
at  least  one  very  important  affair  of  life,  rendering  it  necessary 

his  side  when  he  received  his  degree  Mr.  Webster's  friends  still  remaining  at 
with  a  graceful  bow  ;  and,  such  was  my  Hanover,  and  who  had  a  strong  interest 
connection  with  him  in  our  society  affairs,  in  him,  from  having  been  acquainted 
that  if  he  had  destroyed  it  afterward,  I  with  him  at  Fryeburg,  observed,  in  a 
should  certainly  have  known  it." — (Rev.  letter  written  to  one  of  the  literary  ex- 
E.  Smith  to  Professor  Saribom,  Novem-  ecutors,  in  December,  1852:  "I  never 
ber  10, 1852.  Correspondence,  i.,  46.)  Mr.  heard  of  his  resentment  manifesting  it- 
Webster's  character  and  deportment  in  self  in  tearing  up  his  diploma." 
college,  in  regard  to  which  the  testimony  l  To  the  remark  made  in  the  text, 
is  uniform,  were  entirely  inconsistent  there  is  one  exception.  One  of  the 
with  the  perpetration  of  such  an  act.  ladies  of  this  little  circle,  a  distant  con- 
"  No  one,"  says  Mr.  Smith,  "  presumed  nection  of  my  own,  is  mentioned  in  his 
to  bring  a  railing  accusation  against  letters  by  her  full  name,  Mary  Wood- 
him."  The  Honorable  Samuel  Fessen-  ward.  She  was  a  woman  of  much  talent, 
den,  who  entered  Dartmouth  College  in  and  high  character,  but  married  unfor- 
1803,  and  who  personally  knew  many  of  tunately. 


44  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

for  him  to  hasten  with  all  speed  into  a  settled  position  in 
the  world. 

This  did  not  happen,  however,  to  Daniel  Webster  ;  and, 
after  a  close  scrutiny  of  his  most  confidential  letters,  it  is  quite 
clear  that,  although  he  may  have  been  a  little  interested,  he 
escaped,  on  the  whole,  unharmed.  Perhaps  this  was  owing 
to  the  fact  that  there  were  two  charmers  when  there  should 
have  been  but  one.  That  there  were  two,  that  he  was  a  little 
in  doubt,  that  they  perplexed  him  and  he  them,  and  that  it  was 
chiefly  fun  and  innocent  frolic  on  all  sides,  is  manifest  enough. 
Possibly  the  dignity  of  my  subject  might  have  excluded  this 
inchoate  piece  of  romance.  But  as  there  were  rumors  which 
had  their  day,  and  he  wrote  about  them  half  seriously  and  half 
playfully,  the  reader  may  as  well  see  how  he  dismissed  them. 
One  of  the  young  ladies  whom  he  had  most  admired  was,  it 
would  appear,  a  visitor  from  Salem ;  and  he  thus  gives  a  char 
acteristic  close  to  a  letter  to  his  friend  Bingham,  written  in  the 
winter  of  his  senior  year : 

"  Salem !  enchanting  name !  who  would  have  thought  that  from  the 
ashes  of  witches,  hung  a  century  ago,  should  have  sprung  such  an  arch 
coquette  as  should  delight  in  sporting  with  the  simplicity  of 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER."  l 

"With  respect  to  his  own  opinions  about  his  college  acquire 
ments  and  standing,  I  find  four  occasions  on  which  he  said  or 
wrote  something  directly,  and  the  tenor  of  the  whole  is  uniform. 
The  first  occurred  in  1802,  when  he  had  been  graduated  only  a 
year.  It  was  observed  to  him  that  his  scholarship  in  college 
had  always  been  regarded  as  of  the  highest  grade,  which  was 
not  true  of  a  gentleman  then  at  the  bar,  whom  he  had  expressed 
a  hope  of  some  day  equalling  in  his  professional  career.  He  said : 

"Ay,  but  the  opinion  of  my  scholarship  was  a  mistaken  one.  It  was 
over-estimated.  I  will  explain  what  I  mean.  Many  other  students  read 
more  than  I  did,  and  knew  more  than  I  did  But  so  much  as  I  read  I 
made  my  own.  When  a  half  hour  or  an  hour,  at  most;  had  elapsed,  I 
closed  my  book,  and  thought  over  what  I  had  read.  If  there  was  any 
thing  peculiarly  interesting  or  striking  in  the  passage,  I  endeavored  to 
recall  it,  and  lay  it  up  in  my  memory,  and  commonly  could  effect  my 
object.  Then,  if,  in  debate  or  conversation  afterward,  any  subject  came 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  87. 


1801.]  COLLEGE  ACQUIREMENTS.  45 

up  on  which  I  had  read  something,  I  could  talk  very  easily  so  far  as  I 
had  read,  and  then  I  was  very  careful  to  stop.  Thus  greater  credit  was 
given  me  for  extensive  and  accurate  knowledge  than  I  really  possessed." 1 

The  next  occasion  was  in  1825,  when  he  said  : 

"  My  Greek  and  mathematics  were  not  great  while  I  was  in  college,  but 
I  was  "better  read  in  history  and  English  generally  than  any  of  my  class, 
and  I  was  good  in  composition.  My  Latin  was  pretty  strong  too."  2 

In  his  autobiography  he  says  : 

"  I  was  graduated  in  course,  August,  1801.  Owing  to  some  difficulties 
— Tiaec  non  meminisse  juvat — I  took  no  part  in  the  Commencement  exercises. 
I  spoke  an  oration  to  the  Society  of  the  United  Fraternity,  which  I  suspect 
was  a  sufficiently  boyish  performance. 

"  My  college  life  was  not  an  idle  one.  Besides  the  regular  attendance  on 
prescribed  duties  and  studies,  I  read  something  of  English  history  and 
English  literature.  Perhaps  my  reading  was  too  miscellaneous.  I  even 
paid  my  board  for  a  year  by  superintending  a  little  weekly  newspaper,  and 
making  selections  for  it  from  books  of  literature  and  from  the  contemporary 
publications.  I  suppose  I  sometimes  wrote  a  foolish  paragraph  myself. 
While  in  college,  I  delivered  two  or  three  occasional  addresses,  which  were 
published.  I  trust  they  are  forgotten ;  they  were  in  very  bad  taste.  I  had 
not  then  learned  that  all  true  power  in  writing  is  in  the  idea,  and  not  in 
the  style,  an  error  into  which  the  Ars  rhetorica,  as  it  is  usually  taught,  may 
easily  lead  stronger  heads  than  mine."  * 

In  1851,  eighteen  months  before  his  death,  writing  to  his 
class-mate,  Dr.  Merrill,  he  said  : 

"  I  assure  you,  my  dear  old  friend,  that  I  hear  from  you  with  pleasure. 
You  are  no  shepherd,  and  certainly  I  am  no  king.  But  we  are  friends, 
born  in  the  same  country,  about  the  same  age,  and  educated  at  the  same 
college.  We  embraced  different  professions,  which  we  have  pursued  now 
for  a  long  time ;  and  Providence  has  graciously  blessed  us  both  with  a 
great  share  of  health  and  happiness.  At  our  time  of  life  the  mind  often 
turns  to  the  past.  I  find  that  I  think  now,  much  more  frequently  than 
twenty  or  thirty  years  ago,  on  college  scenes  and  college  friends.  I  look 
over  the  catalogue,  call  to  mind  the  dead,  and  inquire  after  the  living.  I 
well  remember  that  I  did  not  keep  up  with  you  in  the  stated  course  of  col 
legiate  exercises.  Your  lessons  were  better  learned,  and  you  were  a  great 
favorite  with  Professor  Smith  and  the  other  members  of  '  the  authority,' 

1  Letter  from  J.  W.  McGaw,  Esq.,  to  teacher  of  an  academy,  and  they  lived 

Professor  Sanborn,  November,  16,  1852.  much  together. 

— (Correspondence,!.,  51.)    Mr.  McGaw          2  Ticknor  MSS. ;  notes  of  the  conver- 

was  a  young  lawyer  at  Fryeburg,  Maine,  sation  on  the  drive  to  Salem, 
when    Mr.   Webster    resided    there    as          3  Correspondence,  i.,  11. 


46  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  II. 

from  the  exact  punctuality  of  all  your  performances.  I  believe  I  was  less 
industrious ;  at  any  rate,  I  indulged  more  in  general  reading,  and  my  attain 
ments,  if  I  made  any,  were  not  such  as  told  for  much  in  the  recitation-room. 
After  leaving  college,  I  '  caught  up,'  as  the  boys  say,  pretty  well  in  Latin ; 
but  in  college,  and  afterward,  I  left  Greek  to  Loveland,  and  mathematics 
to  Shattuck.  Would  that  I  had  pursued  Greek  till  I  could  read  and 
understand  Demosthenes  in  his  own  language  ! " 

From  youth  to  age  did  lie  thus  always  speak  when  he 
spoke  of  himself ;  with  that  moderation  and  modesty,  that  deli 
cacy  toward  others,  that  unwillingness  to  advance  pretensions, 
which  are  the  characteristics  of  true  greatness,  and  which,  in 
him,  were  unmingled  with  condescension  or  affectation.  If  we 
take  the  sum  of  his  own  testimony,  and  enlarge  it  by  that  of 
others  who  knew  him  at  Dartmouth,  and  who  could  say  what 
he  could  not  say,  adding  also  what  we  can  learn  from  such  of 
his  writings  as  have  survived  from  that  time,  we  find  that  he  left 
the  institution  with  but  a  small  amount  of  Greek,  but  very  well 
grounded  in  Latin ;  that  his  acquisitions  in  English  history  and 
English  literature  were  extensive ;  that  his  powers  as  an  orator 
were  already  developed  to  a  degree  rarely  witnessed  in  a  young 
man  of  nineteen;  that  his  style  of  writing  was  flowing  and 
easy,  but  far  from  that  chaste,  compact,  and  perspicuous 
manner  which  he  afterward  attained  ;  that  he  had  become 
already  a  practised  debater  ;  that  his  faculty  for  labor  was 
something  prodigious,  his  memory  disciplined  by  methods  not 
taught  him  by  others,  and  that  his  intellect  was  expanded  far 
beyond  his  years.  He  was  abstemious,  religious,  of  the  highest 
sense  of  honor,  and  of  the  most  elevated  deportment.  His 
manners  were  genial,  his  affections  warm,  his  conversation  was 
brilliant  and  instructive,  his  temperament  cheerful,  his  gayety 
overflowing.  He  was  beloved,  admired,  and  courted  by  all  who 
knew  him  ;  and,  finally,  when  he  went  forth  from  his  college, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  discouragements  of  his  narrow 
fortunes,  he  was  followed  by  those  who  had  marked  his 
genius  and  measured  his  character,  as  a  young  man  who 
was  soon  to  be  heard  of  with  distinction  on  the  high  placea 
of  the  world. 


1801.]  CHOOSES  A  PROFESSION.  47 


CHAPTER   III. 
1801-1807.  • 

BEGINS  THE  STUDY  OF  THE  LAW  IN  SALISBURY — TEACHES  A  SCHOOL 
IN  MAINE ENTERS  THE  OFFICE  OF  ME.  GOEE  IN  BOSTON AD 
MISSION  TO  THE  BAR REFUSES  A  LUCRATIVE  OFFICE PRAC 
TISES  IN  BOSCAWEN DEATH  OF  HIS  FATHER REMOVAL  TO 

PORTSMOUTH. 

"T~  SAVING  his  brother  Ezekiel  at  college  in  the  Sophomore 
-J-J  class,  Mr.  "Webster  returned  to  his  father's  house  imme 
diately  after  he  was  graduated,  in  August,  1801,  and  com 
menced  the  study  of  the  law  in  the  office  of  Thomas  "W.  Thomp 
son,  Esq.,  a  lawyer  in  Salisbury,  his  father's  neighbor  and 
friend.  He  chose  this  profession  in  compliance  with  the  wish 
of  his  father,  who  did  not,  however,  make  that  wish  known  to 
him  in  any  other  than  the  most  delicate  manner.  His  other 
friends  urged  it  strongly ;  and  the  nearness  of  a  very  good 
lawyer's  office  to  his  father's  house  probably  had  some  influ 
ence  on  his  decision.  But  his  own  inclination  to  the  law  was 
not  at  first  very  strong.  The  tenor  of  his  correspondence  at 
this  period  shows,  at  least,  that  he  would  gladly  have  spent 
some  further  time  in  exploring  the  wider  fields  of  literature. 
Yet  he  "  precipitated "  himself  "  into  an  office,"  as  he  said 
at  the  time,  and  immediately  began  such  a  course  of  ele 
mentary  law-reading  as  the  books  and  the  methods  of  that  day 
afforded. 

Mr.  Thompson,  the  gentleman  with  whom  he  began  to  study 
his  profession,  was  a  lawyer  in  good  country  practice,  an  assiclu- 


48  WFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  III. 

ous  man  of  business,  and  a  person  of  cultivated  mind.1  He 
possessed  a  tolerably  good  law  library,  and  a  much  better  one 
in  general  letters  and  history.  The  first  works  which  Mr. 
"Webster  read  in  the  law  were  in  the  department  of  the 
Law  of  Nations — being  Yattel,  Burlamaqui,  and  Montesquieu. 
These  were  followed  by  a  part  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries, 
and  he  read,  at  the  same  time,  the  historians  Hume  and  Robert 
son.  Nothing  could  have  been  better  at  that  period  for  a 
student  before  entering  upon  the  principles  of  the  municipal 
and  common  law.  He  read  Shakespeare,  too,  a  good  deal  at 
this  time,  some  of  the  poetry  of  Cowper,  and  Pope's  transla 
tion  of  the  Iliad.  His  knowledge  of  Shakespeare  and  of  Milton 
commenced  while  he  was  at  Dartmouth.  He  now  began  to 
quote  them  familiarly  in  his  letters.  He  also  read,  during  the 
autumn  of  this  year,  a  large  amount  of  what  he  calls  "  miscel 
laneous  stuff  of  no  great  account."  His  dog  and  gun  and  his 
fishing-rod  filled  up  his  leisure  hours.3 

But  reading  and  shooting  or  fishing  were  not  the  sole  voca 
tions  of  a  young  law-student  in  those  days.  He  was  expected 
to  look  after  the  minor  affairs  of  the  office  business,  and  a  part 
of  his  professional  education  consisted  in  "  making  writs." 
There  was  another  and  older  student  in  the  office,  Daniel 
Abbot,  afterward  a  leading  lawyer  and  most  estimable  citizen 
of  Nashua,  and  a  life-long  friend  of  Mr.  Webster.  On  one 
occasion,  Mr.  Thompson  and  Mr.  Abbot  were  both  absent,  and 
the  entire  charge  of  affairs  devolved  on  Webster,  who  thus 
indulged  his  wit  upon  a  case  that  fell  into  his  hands : 

"  I  have  made  some  few  writs,  and  am  now  about  to  bring  an  action 
of  trespass  for  breaking  a  violin.  The  owner  of  the  violin  was  at  a 
husking,  where 

4  His  jarring  concord  and  his  discord  dulcet ' 

made  the  girls  skip  over  the  husks  as  nimbly  as  Virgil's  Camilla  over 
the  tops  of  the  corn,  till  an  old  surly  creature  caught  his  fiddle,  and 

1  He  was  graduated  at  Harvard  Col-  from  the  abundance  of  Merrimac  a  few 
lege  in  1786,  and  was  for  three  years  anti- Federal  fishes  —  no   loaves  —  such 
afterward  a  tutor  in  that  university.  as  sword -back,  perch,  and  flat -headed 

2  "  With  the  assistance  of  my  first  demi-semi-crotchet  quavers,  alias  scaly 
minister,  Mr.  Gallatin,   formerly   called  flat-sides." — (Letter  to  James  H.  Bingham, 
Leo,  I  have  dismissed  from  the  office  September  22,  1801.)     The  fun  of  this 
of  this  life  a  few  Federal  partridges,  consists  in  some  allusion  to  the  party 
pigeons,  and  squirrels,  and  have  drawn  politics  of  the  time. 


1801.]  INTERRUPTION  OF  STUDY.  49 

broke  it  against  the  wall.     For  the  sake  of  having  plump  witnesses,  the 
plaintiff  will  summon  all  the  girls  to  attend  the  trial  at  Concord." 1 

But  this  pleasant  and  profitable  life  for  our  young  student 
was  soon  to  be  interrupted. 

As  the  winter  came  on,  it  brought  with  it  Ezekiel's  accu 
mulating  expenses  at  college.  In  December,  Daniel  thus  writes 
to  his  friend  Bingham,  to  whom  he  was  accustomed  to  impart 
his  troubles : 

"  Having  found  myself  at  home  after  commencement,  I  found,  on  con 
sideration,  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  my  father,  under  existing  cir 
cumstances,  to  continue  Ezekiel  at  college.  Drained  of  all  his  little  income 
by  the  expenses  of  my  education  thus  far,  and  broken  down  in  his  exer 
tions  by  some  ever-lamented  family  occurrences,  I  saw  he  could  not  afford 
Ezekiel  means  to  live  abroad  with  ease  and  independence ;  and  I  knew  too 
well  the  evils  of  penury  to  wish  him  to  stay  half-beggared  at  college.  I 
thought  it  therefore  my  duty  to  suffer  some  delay  in  my  profession  for  the 
sake  of  serving  my  elder  brother,  and  was  making  a  little  interest  in  some 
places  to  the  eastward  for  an  employment.  My  father,  however,  deter 
mined  to  hire  a  few  hundreds  till  future  days,  being  very  averse  to  my 
leaving  him.  He  accordingly  rode  to  Exeter,  told  his  Excellency  a  of  the 
state  of  affairs,  and  the  good  governor  helped  him  to  what  he  wanted  on 
reasonable  terms.  This  was  much  more  favorable  than  I  expected,  and  I 
have  now  hopes  of  continuing  here  for  the  present."  8 

Whether  it  was  that  the  supply  obtained  from  "  the  good 
governor's  "  friendly  aid  was  insufficient,  or  whether  some  unex 
pected  demand  broke  down  the  family  resources  with  the 
weight  of  the  last  feather,  the  result  was  that  Daniel  was 
obliged,  before  the  new  year  came  in,  to  quit  his  studies, 
mount  his  horse,  and  go  forth  in  quest,  not  of  adventures, 
but  of  the  vulgar  article  money.  It  was  a  hard  trial  for 
him.  He  had  been  four  months  with  Mr.  Thompson,  and 
very  profitable  months  they  had  been  to  him.  He  was 
going  on  rapidly  in  his  studies  of  all  kinds,  and  he  felt 
more  at  ease,  after  his  father's  visit  to  Governor  Gilman, 
than  he  had  felt  for  a  long  time.  But  duty  and  affection 

1  Letter   to  Bingham,   October  26,    was  so  great,  and  his  character  so  much 
1801.  respected,  that  he  was  more  than  once 

2  John  Taylor  Gilman,  Governor  of     elected  governor  when  his  party  was  in 
New  Hampshire  from  1797  until  1807,     the  minority. 

and  from  1813  to  1815.     He  was  a  very  3   Letter  to  Bingham,  December  8, 

decided  Federalist ;    but  his  popularity     1801. 
5 


50  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IIL 

both  demanded  the  sacrifice,  and  he  made  it  instantly  and 
cheerfully. 

He  had  been  written  to,  and  offered  the  charge  of  an 
academy  in  Fryeburg,  Maine,  which  was  at  that  time  a  "  Prov 
ince"  of  Massachusetts.  This  town  is  at  the  head  of  the 
Saco  River,  not  far  from  the  border  of  New  Hampshire,  near 
the  foot  of  the  White  Mountains,  and  opposite  to  the  town  of 
Conway.  He  purchased  a  horse  for  twenty-five  dollars,  and, 
with  his  wardrobe  and  such  books  as  he  could  carry  in  his 
saddle-bags,  made  his  way  across  the  country.  He  found  the 
village  of  his  destination  a  new  one,  but  it  was  growing 
rapidly,  and  had  already  an  intelligent  population,  in  which 
the  learned  professions  were  all  duly  represented  by  "  men  of 
information  and  conversable  manners,"  as  he  described  them  in 
one  of  his  letters.  His  salary  was  fixed  at  the  rate  of  three 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  year,  but  his  engagement  was  for 
only  six  months.  As  he  had  come  there  to  earn  money,  he 
availed  himself  of  an  accidental  source  of  further  supply,  in  the 
humble  occupation  of  copying  deeds.  It  so  happened  that  he 
went  to  board  in  the  family  of  James  Osgood,  Esq.,  registrar 
of  deeds  for  the  then  newly-created  county  of  Oxford.  This 
gentleman,  Mr.  Webster  tells  us  in  his  autobiography,  "  was 
not  clerical  in  and  of  himself,  and  his  registration  was  to  be 
done  by  deputy." 

"  The  fee  for  recording  at  full  length  a  common  deed,  in  a  large  fair 
hand,  and  with  the  care  requisite  to  avoid  errors,  was  two  shillings  and 
three  pence.  Mr.  Osgood  proposed  to  me  that  I  should  do  this  writing, 
and  that  of  the  two  shillings  and  three  pence  for  each  deed  I  should  have 
one  shilling  and  six  pence.  I  greedily  seized  on  so  tempting  an  offer, 
and  set  to  work.  Of  a  long  winter's  evening  I  could  copy  two  deeds, 
and  that  was  half  a  dollar.  Four  evenings  in  a  week  earned  two 
dollars ;  and  two  dollars  a  week  paid  my  board.  This  appeared  to  me 
to  be  a  very  thriving  condition,  for  my  three  hundred  and  fifty  dol 
lars'  salary  as  a  school-master  was  thus  going  on  without  abatement 
or  deduction  for  vivers.  I  hope  yet  to  have  an  opportunity  to  see  once 
more  the  first  volume  of  the  records  of  deeds  for  the  county  of  Oxford. 
It  is  now  near  thirty  years  since  I  copied  into  it  the  last  '  witness  my 
hand  and  seal,'  and  I  have  not  seen  its  outside  since.  But  the  ache  is  not 
yet  out  of  my  fingers,  for  nothing  has  ever  been  so  laborious  to  me  as 
writing,  when  under  the  necessity  of  writing  a  good  hand."  1 

1  Autobiography. 


1802.]  FIRST  ACQUAINTANCE  WITH  MR.  TICKNOR.  51 

Certainly  this  is  not  the  first  instance,  as  it  will  not  be  the 
last,  in  which  a  similar  labor  has  been,  or  will  be,  submitted  to, 
by  young  men  of  education  contending  against  adverse  for 
tunes.  But  we  naturally  inquire  for  the  motive  that  could  have 
made  such  a  drudgery  possible  to  one  whose  extraordinary  gifts 
of  Nature  had  been  enlarged  and  enriched  by  the  delights  of 
learning.  On  the  other  side  of  the  range  of  hills  that  lay 
between  his  new  abode  and  the  college  which  he  had  recently 
left  was  that  brother,  for  whose  education  he  had  made  him 
self  responsible  to  his  parents ;  while  at  home  was  an  anxious 
and  aged  father,  now  left  without  the  prop  on  which  he  had 
meant  to  lean.  The  whole  secret  of  this  endurance,  therefore, 
is  comprehended  in  the  following  occurrence  : 

"  In  May  of  this  year  (1802),  having  a  week's  vacation,  I  took  my  quar 
ter's  salary,  mounted  a  horse,  went  straight  over  all  the  hills  to  Hanover, 
and  had  the  pleasure  of  putting  these,  the  first  earnings  of  my  life,  into  my 
brother's  hands  for  his  college  expenses.  Having  enjoyed  this  sincere  and 
high  pleasure,  I  hied  me  back  again  to  my  school  and  my  copying  of 
deeds."  l 

It  was  on  this  visit  to  Hanover  that  my  kinsman,  George 
Ticknor,  Esq.,  who,  excepting  myself,  is  now  the  sole  survivor 
of  his  four  literary  executors,  first  saw  him.  As  I  shall  have 
frequent  occasion  to  quote  from  Mr.  Ticknor's  recollections  of 
him,  extending  through  a  period  of  fifty  years,  and  now  form 
ing,  in  manuscript,  some  of  the  most  important  and  interesting 
of  the  materials  before  me,  I  avail  myself  of  his  mention  of  the 
time  when  the  acquaintance  and  friendship  between  Mr.  Web 
ster  and  himself  began.  He  observes : 

"  The  first  time  I  ever  saw  Mr.  Webster  was  in  Hanover,  in  May,  1802. 
All  that  I  remember  of  him  then  is,  that  the  students  of  the  college, 
whom  I  was  in  the  habit  of  seeing,  were  very  proud  and  very  fond  of 
him.  It  was  a  knot  of  young  men,  among  whom  was  Mr.  Henry  Hubbard, 
afterward  Governor  of  New  Hampshire  ;  Amos  Twitchell,  afterward  a  dis 
tinguished  surgeon;  his  own  brother  Ezekiel,  and  others,  living  in  the 
old  Kinsman  House ;  at  least  I  saw  them  there.  He  was  returning  from 
Fryeburg,  where  he  had  kept  school.  He  was  thin,  and  had  not  the 
appearance  of  being  a  strong  man.  He  remained  in  Hanover  only  two  or 
three  days.  The  young  men  seemed  rejoiced  to  have  him  with  them,  and 

1  Autobiography. 


52  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

treated  him  very  caressingly  and  affectionately.    He  had  been  graduated 
only  one  year."  l 

Mr.  Webster  returned  to  Fryeburg,  and  remained  there  in 
the  same  occupations  until  the  following  September.  From 
three  persons  who  knew  him  there,  and  who  were  ever  after 
ward  numbered  among  his  cherished  friends,  we  learn  some 
thing  of  interest  concerning  him.  One  of  them  was  Jacob  W. 
McGaw,  Esq.,  then  a  young  lawyer  in  Fryeburg,  with  whom 
he  lived  at  Mr.  Osgood's.  "  Here,"  said  Mr.  McGaw,  "  was 
laid  the  foundation  of  that  friendship,  which,  by  his  generous 
indulgence,  has  remained  constant  and  uninterrupted  till  the 
time  of  his  death,  notwithstanding  the  very  great  changes 
which  occurred  in  our  relative  positions,  by  reason  of  his  con 
stant  elevation  from  one  grade  of  honor  to  another,  till  he 
attained  a  standing  from  which  human  greatness  knows  no 
progress."  Another  was  Samuel  Osgood,  son  of  the  registrar, 
a  young  man  who  was  near  his  own  age,  and  who  was  just 
then  completing  his  preparation  to  enter  college  at  an  ad 
vanced  standing.  "With  this  gentleman,  who  became  an  emi 
nent  divine  at  Springfield,  in  Massachusetts,  he  contracted 
a  friendship  which  was  mutually  preserved  amidst  all  the 
changes  of  their  lives.  The  third  was  the  Honorable  Samuel 
Fessenden,  of  Portland,  son  of  the  Rev.  William  Fessenden,  of 
Fryeburg,  who  was  Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the 
Academy.  Mr.  Samuel  Fessenden  was  nearly  of  the  same  age 
with  Mr.  Webster,  and  they  were  strongly  attached  to  each 
other.  "  If  I  ever  loved  a  man,"  Mr.  Fessenden  wrote  after 
Mr.  Webster's  death,  "  not  a  near  relative,  and  out  of  the  pale 
of  kindred,  that  man  was  Daniel  Webster."  a 

Mr.  McGaw  tells  us  that  "  he  had  not  then  attained  the  full 
development  of  manhood.  Neither  the  physical  nor  intellectual 
expression  of  his  countenance  had  become  so  striking  as  in  sub 
sequent  life.  His  cheeks  were  thin,  and  his  cheek-bones  high. 
There  was  nothing  specially  noticeable  about  him  then  except 
his  full,  steady,  large,  and  searching  eyes.  Nobody  could  see 
those  eyes  and  ever  forget  their  appearance,  or  him  who  pos- 

1 MSS. — Mr.  Ticknor  was  then  passing    entering  the  college),  on  a  visit  with  his 
a  summer  near  Hanover  (previous  to  his    father  and  mother.  2  MSS. 


1802.]  READING  AT  FRYEBURG.  53 

sessed  them.  His  gentleness,  modesty,  and  social  habits  won 
for  him  the  good- will  of  his  acquaintances  and  pupils." 

"  He  was  always,"  says  Dr.  Osgood,  "  dignified  in  his  de 
portment.  He  was  usually  serious,  but  often  facetious  and 
pleasant.  He  was  an  agreeable  companion,  and  eminently 
social  with  all  who  shared  his  friendship.  He  was  greatly 
beloved  by  all  who  knew  him.  His  habits  were  strictly  ab 
stemious,  and  he  neither  took  wine  nor  strong  drink.  He  was 
punctual  in  his  attendance  upon  public  worship,  and  ever 
opened  his  school  with  prayer.  I  never  heard  him  use  a 
profane  word,  and  never  saw  him  lose  his  temper." 

Mr.  Fessenden,  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the  literary  execu 
tors,  after  Mr.  Webster's  decease,  observes  : 

"  The  first  I  ever  knew  of  Daniel  Webster  was  immediately  after  he  left 
college,  and  was  employed  by  my  father,  the  secretary  of  the  Trustees  of 
Fryeburg  Academy,  to  become  the  principal  instructor  in  that  institution. 
He  was  not,  when  he  commenced,  twenty  years  old.  I  heard  no  one  com 
plain  that  his  scholarship  was  not  adequate  to  the  duty  he  had  assumed. 
On  the  contrary,  I  heard  the  Kev.  Dr.  Nathaniel  Porter,  of  Conway,  and 
my  father,  the  Rev.  William  Fessenden,  of  Fryeburg,  both  of  whom  were 
good  scholars,  and  the  former,  Dr.  Porter,  a  very  great  man,  say  that 
Daniel  Webster  was  then  a  very  good  scholar  for  one  of  his  years.  He 
did,  while  at  Fryeburg,  exhibit  traits  of  talent  and  genius  which  drew 
from  those  two  divines,  and  from  other  professional  gentlemen,  unqualified 
praise  of  his  powers  of  mind.  I  remember  very  distinctly  hearing  my 
father  remark  that,  if  Mr.  Webster  should  live,  and  have  health,  and  pur 
sue  a  straightforward  course  of  industry  and  virtue,  he  would  become 
one  of  the  greatest  men  this  country  had  produced." 

His  reading  at  Fryeburg  was  chiefly  in  history  and  politics, 
and  English  literature.  He  began  then  to  investigate  carefully 
some  parts  of  the  political  history  of  the  United  States.  He  read 
Adams's  Defence  of  the  American  Constitutions,1  Williams's  Ver 
mont,  and  Mosheim's  Ecclesiastical  History ;  and  he  continued 
his  reading  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries.  Here,  too,  he  found 
Mr.  Ames's  celebrated  speech  on  the  British  treaty,  and  com 
mitted  it  to  memory.  He  read  the  Spectator  and  the  Tatler, 
and  the  whole  of  Pope's  poetical  works,  with  many  other  things. 
Some  idea  of  his  industry  may  be  formed  from  this  list,  when 
we  remember  that  he  was  at  the  same  time  teaching  a  school, 
and  copying  deeds  four  evenings  in  the  week. 


54  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

All  his  hours  that  could  be  spared  from  labor,  or  necessary- 
recreation,  were  spent  in  study  or  in  meditation  in  the  fields, 
and  he  rarely  went  abroad  in  his  rambles  without  a  book.1 

What  he  was  as  a  teacher,  is  sufficiently  attested  by  the  fact 
that  he  was  earnestly  pressed  to  remain  on  an  increased  salary. 
"  A  compensation  annually  of  five  or  six  hundred  dollars,"  he 
writes  to  Bingham,  "  a  house  to  live  in,  a  piece  of  land  to  culti 
vate,  and,  inter  nos  solos,  a  clerkship  of  the  Common  Pleas,  are 
now  probably  within  the  reach  and  possession  of  your  friend." 

I  cannot  say  that  he  hesitated  much,  but  he  did  honestly 
put  down  upon  paper  both  sides  of  the  question. 

Mr.  McGaw  was  always  of  opinion  that  he  did  not  at  this 
time  feel  very  strongly  the  promptings  of  ambition,  or  entertain 
any  very  sanguine  expectations  of  future  eminence  ;  or  that,  if 
he  had  such  expectations,  he  concealed  them.  In  proof  of  this, 
he  refers  to  several  occasions  on  which  Mr.  Webster  evinced  in 
conversation  a  very  moderate  estimate  of  himself  and  his  future 
prospects.  But  we  are  to  remember  that,  over  all  his  youth, 
poverty  had  cast  its  discouraging  shadow,  and  that  the  vigor  and 
elasticity  of  even  his  spirit  must  have  been  occasionally  chilled 
by  it.  We  are  to  recollect,  too,  some  points  of  his  character 
which  never  changed.  He  was  always  a  serious  man  in  every 
serious  affair  of  life.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  conscious 
ness  of  superior  intellectual  powers,  he  never  treated  any  thing 
contemptuously,  which  obliged  him  to  put  himself  on  a  level  with 
others  for  the  purpose  of  measuring  the  exertion  which  he  had  to 
put  forth.  Whatever  he  may  have  thought  of  this  offer,  which 
the  good  people  of  Fryeburg  doubtless  made  as  tempting  as  they 
could,  he  met  it  with  no  disdain,  even  when  writing  of  it  to  one 
of  his  most  intimate  friends.  But  he  was  drawn  away  from  it, 
first,  by  his  father's  desire  to  have  him  embrace  the  profession  of 
the  law ;  and  secondly,  as  I  have  no  doubt,  by  that  mysterious 
power,  which  operates  unconsciously  upon  men  of  great  intellect 
in  their  youth,  leading  them  toward  the  destiny  which  genius  cre 
ates  for  them,  and  carrying  them  away  from  the  proffered  com 
fort  of  obscure  and  inferior  stations  to  further  efforts  and  contin 
ued  privation,  until  the  loftier  sphere,  which  has  been  scarcely 
revealed  to  their  vision,  is  entered  in  triumph  at  last.  So,  at 

1  Dr.  Osgood. 


1802.]  ADHERES  TO  THE  LAW.  55 

least,  I  interpret  the  sober  views  which,  the  young  Webster 
thus  expressed  to  his  friends,  before  he  finally  decided  not  to 
make  himself  for  life  school-master  and  denizen  of  Fryeburg, 
and  Clerk  of  the  Common  Pleas  for  the  county  of  Oxford  : 

"  What  shall  I  do  ?  Shall  I  say,  '  Yes,  gentlemen,'  and  sit  down  here 
to  spend  my  days  in  a  kind  of  comfortable  privacy,  or  shall  I  relinquish 
these  prospects,  and  enter  into  a  profession,  where  my  feelings  will  be  con 
stantly  harrowed  by  objects  either  of  dishonesty  or  misfortune ;  where  my 
living  must  be  squeezed  from  penury  (for  rich  folks  seldom  go  to  law), 
and  my  moral  principle  continually  be  at  hazard  ?  I  agree  with  you  that 
the  law  is  well  calculated  to  draw  forth  the  powers  of  the  mind,  but  what 
are  its  effects  on  the  heart  ?  Are  they  equally  propitious  ?  Does  it  inspire 
benevolence,  and  awake  tenderness ;  or  does  it,  by  a  frequent  repetition 
of  wretched  objects,  blunt  sensibility,  and  stifle  the  still  small  voice  of 
mercy  ? 

"  The  talent  with  which  Heaven  has  intrusted  me  is  small,  very  small, 
yet  I  feel  responsible  for  the  use  of  it,  and  am  not  willing  to  pervert  it  to 
purposes  reproachful  and  unjust ;  nor  to  hide  it,  like  the  slothful  servant, 
in  a  napkin. 

"  Now,  I  will  enumerate  the  inducements  that  draw  me  toward  the 
law:  First,  and  principally,  it  is  my  father's  wish.  He  does  not  dictate, 
it  is  true,  but  how  much  short  of  dictation  is  the  mere  wish  of  a  parent, 
whose  labors  of  life  are  wasted  on  favors  to  his  children  ?  Even  the 
delicacy  with  which  this  wish  is  expressed  gives  it  more  effect  than  it  would 
have  in  the  form  of  a  command.  Secondly,  my  friends  generally  wish  it. 
They  are  urgent  and  pressing.  My  father  even  offers  me — I  will  some 
time  tell  you  what — and  Mr.  Thompson  offers  my  tuition  gratis,  and  to 
relinquish  his  stand  to  me. 

"  On  the  whole,  I  imagine  I  shall  make  one  more  trial  in  the  ensuing 
autumn.  If  I  prosecute  the  profession,  I  pray  God  to  fortify  me  against 
its  temptations.  To  the  winds  I  dismiss  those  light  hopes  of  eminence 
which  ambition  inspired,  and  vanity  fostered.  To  be  'honest,  to  be 
capable,  to  be  faithful '  to  my  client  and  my  conscience,  I  earnestly  hope 
will  be  my  first  endeavor.  I  believe  you,  my  worthy  boy,  when  you  tell 
me  what  are  your  intentions.  I  have  long  known  and  long  loved  the 
honesty  of  your  heart.  But  let  us  not  rely  too  much  on  ourselves ;  let  us 
look  to  some  less  fallible  guide  to  direct  us  among  the  temptations  that 
surround  us."  1 

In  September,  Ezekiel  came  to  Fryeburg,  and  the  two 
brothers  made  a  journey  together  to  the  lower  part  of  Maine, 
and  then  returned  to  Salisbury.  Ezekiel  soon  after  went  back 
to  college,  and  Daniel  resumed  his  place  in  Mr.  Thompson's 

1  Letter  to  Bingham,  May  18,  1802. 


56  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IIL 

office,  where  lie  remained  until  February  or  March,  1804. 
"What  his  studies  had  thus  far  been  in  the  law,  the  reader  has 
seen.  Mr.  Thompson  now  made  one  mistake  in  directing  his 
reading,  to  which  Mr.  Webster  thus  refers  in  his  autobio 
graphy  :  "  He  was  an  admirable  man,  and  a  good  lawyer  him 
self,  but  I  was  put  to  study  in  the  old  way,  that  is,  the  hardest 
books  first,  and  lost  much  time.  I  read  Coke-Littleton  through 
without  understanding  a  quarter  part  of  it."  But  he  had 
already  mentioned  in  the  same  paragraph  that  he  had  read 
two  or  three  volumes  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries ;  and  the 
criticism  therefore,  which  follows,  and  is  now  to  be  quoted,  was 
intended  to  point  out  the  inexpediency  of  making  Coke  a  text 
book  after  Blackstone,  with  nothing  between  them  to  instruct 
the  pupil  in  the  application  of  the  principles  of  the  common 
law  to  the  transactions  of  life  which  form  the  subjects  of 
ordinary  litigation.  The  best  book  which  Mr.  "Webster  could 
then  find  within  his  reach,  for  this  purpose,  was  Espinasse's 
]STisi  Prius ;  and,  inferior  as  this  was  to  the  numerous  text 
books  since  written,  it  answered  very  well.  His  resort  to  it 
shows  that  he  did  not  mean  to  have  it  understood,  from  his 
observations  about  Coke,  that  Mr.  Thompson  had  neglected  to 
inform  him  that  Blackstone's  Commentaries  was  the  proper 
book  with  which  to  begin  his  legal  studies.  In  fact,  his  cor 
respondence  shows  that  he  began  Blackstone  when  he  first 
entered  Mr.  Thompson's  office,  in  the  autumn  of  1801.  In  the 
Autobiography  he  says : 

"  Happening  to  take  up  Espinasse's  '  Law  of  Nisi  Prius,'  I  found  I  could 
understand  it,  and,  arguing  that  the  object  of  reading  was  to  understand 
what  was  written,  I  laid  down  the  venerable  Coke,  et  olios  similes  rev&- 
rendos,  and  kept  company  for  a  time  with  Mr.  Espinasse  and  others,  the 
most  plain,  easy,  and  intelligible  writers.  A  boy  of  twenty,  with  no  previ 
ous  knowledge  of  such  subjects,  cannot  understand  Coke.  It  is  folly  to 
set  him  on  such  an  author. 

"  There  are  propositions  in  Coke  so  abstract,  and  distinctions  so  nice, 
and  doctrines  embracing  so  many  conditions  and  qualifications,  that  it 
requires  an  effort,  not  only  of  a  mature  mind,  but  of  a  mind  both  strong 
and  mature,  to  understand  him.  Why  disgust  and  discourage  a  boy  by 
telling  him  that  he  must  break  into  his  profession  through  such  a  wall  as 
this  ?  I  really  often  despaired.  I  thought  I  never  could  make  myself  a 
lawyer,  and  was  almost  going  back  to  the  business  of  school-keeping.  A 


1804.]  STUDIES  AND  REVERIES.  57 

friend  has  recently  returned  to  me  a  letter,  written  by  me  to  him  at  that 
time,  showing  my  feelings  of  despondence  and  despair.  Mr.  Espinasse, 
however,  helped  me  out  of  this  in  the  way  I  have  mentioned ;  and  I  have 
always  felt  greatly  obliged  to  him." 

He  had  not  gone  far,  however,  in  his  law  studies,  before  he 
made  another  discovery  which  was  quite  characteristic  of  him, 
because  it  denoted  a  principle  upon  which  he  had  been  accus 
tomed  in  college  to  discipline  and  to  store  his  memory  on  other 
subjects.  "  Here  give  me  leave,"  he  writes  to  Bingham,  "  to 
pronounce  a  wise  opinion,  viz.,  that  the  best  way  to  study  law 
is  in  relation  to  particular  points.  I  had  read  the  statute  of  lim 
itations,  I  do  not  know  how  many  times,  nor  how  many  more 
times  I  might  have  read  it  among  others,  without  discovering 
that  it  did  not  affect  a  sealed  instrument,  unless  I  had  looked 
with  reference  to  that  particular  inquiry.  It  is  very  much  so, 
I  believe,  with  history.  We  read  page  after  page,  and,  retaining 
a  slender  thread  of  events,  every  thing  else  glides  from  the  mind 
about  as  fast  as  the  eye  traces  the  lines  of  the  book,  yet,  when 
we  examine  a  particular  occurrence,  or  search  after  a  single  date, 
the  impression  is  permanent,  and  we  have  added  one  idea  to  the 
stock  of  real  knowledge."  * 

Of  his  other  reading,  while  he  remained  in  Mr.  Thompson's 
office,  we  get  some  sketches,  also  from  his  own  pen  : 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  I  read  much  during  this  year  and  a  half 
besides  law-books,  with  two  exceptions.  I  read  Hume  through,  not  for  the 
first  time ;  but  my  principal  occupation  with  books,  when  not  law-books, 
was  with  the  Latin  classics.  I  brought  from  college  a  very  scanty  inheri 
tance  of  Latin.  I  now  tried  to  add  to  it.  I  made  myself  familiar  with 
most  of  Tully's  Orations,  committed  to  memory  large  passages  of  some  of 
them  ;  read  Sallust  and  Caesar  and  Horace.  Some  of  Horace's  Odes  I 
translated  into  poor  English  rhymes ;  they  were  printed.  I  have  never 
seen  them  since.  My  brother  was  a  far  better  Latin  scholar  than  myself, 
and,  in  one  of  his  vacations,  we  read  Juvenal  together.  But  I  never 
mastered  his  style,  so  as  to  read  him  with  ease  and  pleasure.  At  this 
period  of  my  life  I  passed  a  great  deal  of  time  alone.  My  amusements 
were  fishing  and  shooting  and  riding ;  and  all  these  were  without  a  com 
panion.  I  loved  this  occasional  solitude  then,  and  have  loved  it  ever 
since,  and  love  it  still.  I  like  to  contemplate  Nature,  and  to  hold  com 
munion,  unbroken  by  the  presence  of  human  beings,  with  '  this  universal 
frame — thus  wondrous  fair.'  I  like  solitude  also,  as  favorable  to  thoughts 

1  Letter  to  Bingham,  December  21,  1802. — (Correspondence,  i.,  127.) 


58  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

less  lofty.  I  like  to  let  the  thoughts  go  free,  and  indulge  excursions.  And 
when  thinking  is  to  be  done,  one  must,  of  course,  be  alone.  No  man  knows 
himself  who  does  not  thus  sometimes  keep  his  own  company.  At  a  subse 
quent  period  of  life,  I  have  found  that  my  lonely  journeys,  when  following 
the  court  on  its  circuits,  have  afforded  many  an  edifying  day." 

No  man,  who  ever  rose  to  great  eminence  in  the  profession 
of  the  law,  has  entered  it  through  an  experience  more  danger 
ous  to  an  elevated  and  generous  view  of  the  objects  which  a 
young  lawyer  should  set  before  him.  If  a  hard  and  pinching 
necessity  could  ever  excuse  the  growth  of  a  sordid  desire  for 
gain,  and  the  pursuit  of  it  by  ignoble  means,  they  would  have 
been  excused  in  him. 

For  nearly  two  years  Mr.  Webster  studied  the  law  in  a 
country  village,  where  the  lowest  and  speediest  of  its  modes  of 
gaining  money  must  have  been  the  chief  aspect  in  which  it 
appeared  to  him  as  a  calling. 

But  his  nature  was  one  that  could  not  be  satisfied  with  the 
acquisition  of  any  profession,  merely  because  it  offered  the 
speediest  prospects  of  gain.  Poor  as  he  was,  and  plainly  as  he 
must  have  seen  that  the  sharp  weapons  of  the  law,  in  his 
hands,  might  be  turned  rapidly  to  account,  he  did  not  keep 
himself  from  those  elegant  studies  which  bring  in  their  im 
mediate  riches  to  the  mind  alone.  He  turned  from  the  statute 
of  limitations  and  the  writs  of  a  country  office  to  the  Latin 
classics,  to  history,  to  poetry,  to  whatever  would  keep  him  from 
losing  the  love  of  letters,  which  he  had  so  eagerly  and  so  fully 
cultivated  from  his  boyhood.  Instead  of  being  attracted,  he 
was  repelled  by  the  facilities  which  the  lower  departments 
of  legal  practice  appeared  to  afford  for  making  money;  for 
he  saw  that  they  were  chiefly  concerned  with  those  whom  he 
described  as  "  the  very  refuse  and  remnant  of  mankind."  He 
complains,  too,  that  "  law-reading  has  no  tendency  to  add  the 
embellishments  of  literature  to  a  student's  acquisitions.  Our 
books,"  he  adds,  "  are  written  in  a  hard,  didactic  style,  inter 
spersed  on  every  page  with  the  mangled  pieces  of  murdered 
Latin,  and  as  perfectly  barren  of  all  elegance  as  a  girl's  cheek 
is  of  beard.1  The  morality  of  the  profession  is,  too,  a  matter 

1  There  was  nothing  for  the  student  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  of  whom 
then  but  what  had  come  to  us  from  Eng-  he  would  not  have  made  this  criticism, 
land.  He  lived  to  see  other  writers  arise  Have  we  paid  back  the  debt  ? 


1803.]  LAW  STUDIES.  59 

of  doubt,  or  rather  it  is  a  matter  of  no  doubt  at  all.  Mr. 
Bennett  says  that  a  lawyer,  who  preserves  his  integrity  un 
spotted,  deserves  a  place  in  the  calendar  of  saints.  If  this 
calendar  were  entirely  made  up  of  lawyers,  I  fancy  it  would  be 
a  short,  a  very  short  list,  not  so  long,  if  you  take  the  whole 
world  over,  as  a  catalogue  of  Freshmen,  and  yet  this  is  the 
profession  to  which  I  am  devoting  myself."  But,  in  the  midst 
of  these  disheartening  views,  he  consoles  himself  with  the  reflec 
tion  that,  "  if  one  can  keep  up  an  acquaintance  with  general 
literature  in  the  mean  time,  the  law  may  help  to  invigorate  and 
unfold  the  powers  of  the  mind." 

He  found  that  great  help  in  due  time.  He  mastered  Coke 
without  serious  difficulty,  after  he  had  learned  to  apply  his 
severe  abstractions  ;  and  he  read  him,  too,  in  black-letter.1  He 
"  laid  hands  heavily  " — to  borrow  his  own  expression — on  the 
special  pleading  of  the  common  law ;  a  science  which  few  of 
our  young  lawyers  of  the  present  day  have  an  opportunity  of 
studying  for  practical  use,  and  which,  as  an  aid  to  mental  dis 
cipline,  and  as  a  system  of  logical  devolution  of  the  issues  of  a 
strictly  legal  controversy,  is  entirely  unequalled  by  any  of  the 
modern  devices  which  have  supplanted  it.  Mr.  Webster  was 
always  one  of  the  best  special  pleaders  of  his  time ;  and  he 
owed  his  knowledge  of  the  intricacies  and  the  order  of  that 
method  of  pleading  to  the  diligence  with  which  he  worked  it 
out  in  the  Latin  pages  of  Saunders,  translating  and  copying  as 
he  read.  Yet  with  these  graver  studies  he  continued  to  make 
rhymes  for  his  own  amusement,  and  for  the  sake  of  "  keeping 
alive,"  as  he  said,  "  some  taste  for  the  "belles  lettres"  But  he 
had  no  inclination  to  be  drawn  before  the  public  as  a  poet. 
He  was  invited,  in  the  winter  of  1803,  to  deliver  a  poem  before 

1  He  could  not  always  restrain  his  6,  1803.  Correspondence,  vol.  i.)  I 
fun  over  some  of  the  doctrines  of  the  suppose  that  when  he  mooted  this  in- 
English  law :  "  The  law  question  that  teresting  question,  he  must  have  had 
now  puzzles  us  in  this  quarter  is,  whether  before  him  Coke's  Observations  on  the 
Bonaparte,  when  he  shall  have  gone  to  Statute  25,  Edward  III.,  de  proditionibus  ; 
John  Bull's  palace,  and  taken  hold  of  where  that  "  prince  of  the  law,"  as  he 
the  ring  of  the  door  in  the  name  of  calls  stout  old  Sir  Edward,  lays  down 
seisin  of  the  whole  island,  will  be  such  how  treason  may  be  committed  against 
a  king  against  whom  it  will  be  treason  the  king  in  possession,  although  done  in 
in  an  Englishman  to  fight.  But  they  behalf  of  the  king  who  ought  to  be  in 
may  settle  this  among  them ;  you  and  possession  ;  and  how  a  pardon  by  the 
I  will  not  give  an  opinion  without  king  de  jure  is  no  pardon  if  he  be  not 
a  fee."  — (Letter  to  Bingham,  October  also  king  de  facto.— (See  3d  Inst.,  617.)  • 


60  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

the   Phi  Beta  Kappa   Society  of  Dartmouth,  at  their  next 
anniversary.     Writing  to  his  class-mate  Merrill,  he  says  : 

"  John  Porter,  in  his  official  capacity,  has  notified  me  of  the  wishes  of 
the  P.  B.  to  write  them  a  poem.  If  six  of  the  nine  Muses  were  to  stand 
at  my  elbow,  and  promise  that,  according  to  their  best  discretion,  they 
would  inspire  every  line,  word,  and  syllable,  semicolon  and  comma,  I 
should  not  choose  to  write  a  poem.  I  left  making  rhymes  when  I  left  col 
lege  ;  and,  as  to  poetry,  I  do  not  know  that  I  ever  made  any." 

As  time  sped  on  with  him,  although  he  could  not  quite  shake 
off  all  the  influences  of  his  narrow  fortunes,  he  began  to  be  less 
discomfited  by  them,  and  also  to  have  some  perception  of  what 
the  jurisprudence  of  his  country  was  to  become.  "  What  you 
have  said,"  he  replies  to  Binghani,  "  of  the  obstacles  in  the  way 
to  eminence  in  this  country,  has  much  to  support  it.  But  what 
then  ?  Must  we  sit  down  contented  in  the  lonely  valley  of  infe 
riority  ?  This  is  a  cold,  poor,  comfortless  place.  If  the  hill  of 
difficulties  be  so  high  that  we  cannot  climb  over  it,  yet  perhaps 
we  can  make  a  shift  to  creep  round  it.  At  all  events,  it  is  worth 
the  trial.  I  do  not  soon  expect  to  see  in  America  a  Locke,  a  New 
ton,  a  Pope,  or  a  Sir  Joshua.  But  Mansfields  and  Kenyons,  I 
believe,  we  shall  rear  in  the  next  age.  And  the  reason  of  the  dif 
ference  is,  that  eminence  will  be  sought  with  more  ardor  in  the 
lucrative  professions,  than  in  the  abstract  sciences  and  the  fine 
arts."  Still,  for  himself,  his  expectations,  so  far  as  they  were 
expressed  to  his  friends,  continued  to  be  moderate  and  subdued. 
"  Yet,  Merrill,"  he  writes  a  year  later, "  you  and  I  have  some  am 
bition  ;  so  has,  or  ought  to  have,  every  one.  So  much  ambition 
as  shall  prompt  to  laudable  exertion  and  industry ;  so  much  as 
is  well  consistent  with  the  duties  and  the  honest  pleasures  of 
life,  as  induces  a  wish  to  make  ourselves  respected  by  our  friends 
and  not  entirely  despised  by  our  enemies ;  and,  on  the  score  of 
property,  so  much  ambition  as  instigates  to  the  acquirement  of 
a  decent,  competent  estate,  enabling  us  to  treat  our  friends  as 
they  deserve,  and  to  live  free  from  embarrassment ;  this  degree 
of  ambition  is  rational  and  necessary." 

Was  this  all  that  at  the  age  of  two-and-twenty  he  had  pro 
posed  to  himself?  Did  his  description  of  a  "  rational  and  neces 
sary  ambition  "  comprehend  all  that  burned  within  him,  or  was 
there  still  something  that  he  held  in  reserve,  even  with  his  youth- 


1804.]  THE   SHORT-STREET   SCHOOL.  61 

ful  companions,  and  that  urged  him  on  to  a  more  brilliant  future 
than  that  which  he  depicted  as  their  common  lot  ?  His  corre 
spondence  with  his  college  friends  was  entirely  free  and  intimate, 
and  he  probably  expressed  in  it,  as  openly  as  any  man  ever  ex 
presses  in  such  letters,  the  feelings  of  his  heart.  Apparently  he 
was  not  at  this  time  looking,  in  his  own  thoughts,  for  the  great 
prizes  in  the  lottery  of  life.  He  was  a  diligent  and  laborious 
student,  devoted  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  both  in  and  out 
of  his  profession.  He  did  not  mean  to  take  an  inferior  position 
in  it,  and  he  did  not  confidently  expect  to  ascend  to  its  highest 
honors.  He  was  not,  at  this  time,  looking  to  any  of  the  chief 
cities  or  the  large  towns  as  his  future  theatre.  He  knew  that 
while  his  father  lived,  and  perhaps  for  a  much  longer  period,  he 
must  be  where  he  could  minister  to  the  comfort  of  those  who 
had  now  such  strong  claims  upon  his  presence  and  his  care. 
The  life  of  a  country  lawyer,  therefore,  was  the  sphere  that 
appeared  to  him  to  be  before  him.  Still  the  great  powers 
which  he  had  so  sedulously  cultivated,  and  which  stirred 
within  him  half -conscious  of  their  destiny,  craved  a  larger 
development,  wider  fields  of  observation,  and  more  ample 
means  of  culture,  than  his  native  village  could  afford.  He 
had  a  strong  desire  to  finish  his  studies  in  Boston  ;  and 
thither  his  hopes  and  his  plans  tended  for  some  time  in  the 
autumn  and  early  winter  of  1803.  But  he  had  to  wait,  as  he 
said,  until  "  something  like  a  miracle  "  should  put  the  means 
into  his  hands. 

The  "  miracle  "  came  in  the  shape  of  an  accidental  turn  of  his 
brother's  affairs.  Ezekiel  had  worked  hard  to  maintain  himself 
at  college,  and  had  been  helped  by  all  at  home,  until  help  was 
no  longer  possible.  Something  had  to  be  done  by  one  or  the 
other  of  the  brothers  to  recruit  their  exhausted  finances.  Eze 
kiel  passed  the  winter  vacation  of  1803-'4  in  teaching  a  school 
in  Sanbornton ;  and  in  February,  Daniel  went  to  Boston,  to  seek 
some  employment  for  himself  or  his  brother.  It  chanced  that  a 
young  college  friend  of  theirs,  Dr.  Cyrus  Perkins,  afterward  a 
distinguished  physician  in  Boston  and  New  York,  had  been  for 
some  time  teaching  a  small  private  school  in  Boston,  in  what  was 
then  called  "  Short "  Street.1  He  had  obtained  the  mastership  of 

1  Since  a  part  of  " Kingston"  Street. 


62  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  HI. 

one  of  the  public  schools,  and  offered  to  relinquish  his  private 
school  to  Ezekiel  Webster. 

This  arrangement  was  at  once  concluded,  as  soon  as  Daniel 
could  return  to  Salisbury;  and  Ezekiel  went  immediately  to 
Boston,  although  at  the  risk  of  not  obtaining  his  degree  at  the 
ensuing  college  commencement. 

Ezekiel  being  thus  settled  for  a  time  in  Boston,  Daniel  appears 
to  have  turned  his  thoughts  toward  the  city  of  New  York.  But 
his  brother  earnestly  opposed  this  plan,  and  thus  advised  his 
coming  to  Boston : 

"  Agreeably  to  your  injunction,  I  have  thought  and  meditated  upon 
your  letter  for  three  days,  and  for  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  three 
nights,  and  I  now  give  you  the  result  as  freely  as  I  wish  your  welfare.  I 
am  directly  opposed  to  your  going  to  New  York,  and  for  several  reasons. 
First,  the  expensiveness  of  a  journey  to  that  city,  and  of  a  residence  in  it,  is, 
with  me,  a  material  objection ;  secondly,  the  embarrassments  to  which 
you  will  be  liable,  without  friends  to  assist,  or  patronage  to  support  you ; 
thirdly,  I  fear  the  climate  would  be  injuribus  to  your  constitution.  I 
have  now  told  you  what  I  would  not  have  you  do ;  and  I  also  tell  you 
what  I  wish  you  to  do.  I  would  have  you  decamp  immediately  with  all  your 
baggage  from  Salisbury,  and  march  directly  to  this  place.  This  is  the  opin 
ion  which  I  have  maturely  formed,  for  which  a  thousand  reasons  might  be 
urged.  They  are  too  numerous  to  be  mentioned,  nor  is  it  perhaps  neces 
sary,  for  I  say  to  you  imperatively,  '  Come.'  It  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world  for  a  fellow  of  any  enterprise  or  ability  to  support  himself  here 
very  handsomely,  without  descending  to  any  business  incompatible  with 
the  situation  of  a  gentleman.  Here,  too,  is  the  focus  of  information.  .  .  . 
I  will  state  to  you  a  single  circumstance  which,  I  think,  will  remove  all 
doubt  about  paying  your  way.  I  have  now  eight  scholars  in  Latin  and 
Greek,  whom  I  shall  be  obliged  to  dismiss  if  I  cannot  have  an  assistant, 
and  I  dare  not  at  present  hire  one.  The  tuition  of  these  eight  scholars 
will  pay  for  your  board.  They  recite  twice  in  a  day,  and  it  will  take  you 
about  three-fourths  of  an  hour  to  hear  them  each  time.  Here,  then,  you 
can  support  yourself  by  the  labor  of  one  hour  and  a  half  each  day.  If 
you  will  spend  that  time  in  my  school  daily,  I  will  board  you  at  as 
genteel  a  boarding-house  as  you  can  wish,  or  the  place  affords.  Consult 
father,  the  family,  and  your  friends,  and  start  for  Boston  the  next  day 
after  the  receipt  of  this  letter.  Another  such  an  opportunity  may  never 
occur.  Come,  and,  if  you  don't  find  every  thing  to  your  liking,  I  will 
carry  you  back  to  Salisbury  with  a  chaise  and  six,  and  pay  you  for  your 
time.  I  must  say  again,  consult  father.  If  he  approves,  take  the  patri 
archal  blessing,  and  come."  l 

1  Ezekiel  to  Daniel,  April  4,  1804. 


1804.]  CHRISTOPHER  GORE.  63 

Mr.  "Webster  says  in  his  Autobiography : 

"Accordingly,  I  went  to  Boston  in  July,  to  pass  a  few  months  in 
some  office.  I  had  not  a  single  letter,  and  knew  nobody  in  the  place  to 
which  I  was  going,  except  Dr.  Perkins,  then  a  very  young  man,  and,  like 
myself,  struggling  to  get  on.  But  I  was  sanguine,  and  light-hearted. 
He  easily  persuades  himself  that  he  shall  gain  who  has  nothing  to  lose, 
and  is  not  afraid  of  attempting  to  climb,  when,  if  he  fail  in  his  first 
step,  he  is  in  no  danger  of  a  fall.  Arrived  in  Boston,  I  looked  out  for 
an  office  wherein  to  study.  But,  then,  as  I  knew  none  of  the  legal 
gentlemen,  and  had  no  letter,  this  was  an  affair  of  some  difficulty.  Some 
attempts  to  be  received  into  a  lawyer's  office  failed,  properly  enough,  for 
these  reasons ;  although  the  reminiscence  has  since  sometimes  caused  me 
to  smile." 

Mr.  Ticknor  observes,  that  Mr.  "Webster  made  but  one 
such  unsuccessful  application,  and  that  he  was  in  the  presence 
of  the  gentleman  but  for  a  moment,  who  never  remembered 
the  occurrence  afterward.  There  was  one  member  of  that 
bar,  however,  who  had  a  quicker  penetration,  although  his 
associations  and  habits  might  perhaps  have  made  access  to 
him  under  such  circumstances  even  more  difficult  than  to 
others. 

Christopher  Gore,  whose  pupil  Mr.  "Webster  became  in  Bos 
ton,  was  the  first  district  attorney  of  the  United  States  for  Mas 
sachusetts,  having  been  appointed  to  that  office  by  Washington 
in  1Y89.  In  1796  he  was  sent  to  England  as  a  commissioner 
under  Jay's  treaty,  for  the  settlement  of  claims  of  citizens  of  the 
United  States  for  spoliations  by  British  cruisers  during  the  wars 
of  the  French  Revolution.  He  remained  in  London  in  the  dis 
charge  of  that  duty  for  nearly  eight  years ;  and,  during  an  ab 
sence  of  the  American  minister  in  1803,  he  acted  as  charge  d* af 
faires.  He  was  a  man  of  good  fortune,  a  scholar  and  a  courtly 
and  polished  gentleman,  whose  information  and  manners  exhib 
ited  the  fruits  of  much  intercourse  with  the  world.  He  was, 
too,  an  excellent  commercial  lawyer,  fond  of  the  practice  of 
his  profession,  in  which  his  standing  was  eminently  respectable. 
On  his  return  to  Boston,  shortly  before  Mr.  "Webster  applied  to 
be  received  as  his  pupil,  he  had  resumed  his  practice.  Five 
years  afterward,  in  1809,  he  was  elected  Governor  of  Massa 
chusetts  by  the  Federal  party,  but  in  the  next  year  he  was 


64  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

defeated  by  Mr.  Gerry,  the  candidate  of  the  Democratic  party.1 
From  1813  to  1815  lie  was  a  member  of  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States.  It  was  a  most  fortunate  thing  for  Mr.  "Web 
ster  that  he  came  in  contact  with  such  a  man.  Mr.  Gore 
was,  doubtless,  the  first  person  he  had  then  met,  who,  to 
great  refinement  of  manners  and  complete  knowledge  of 
the  world,  united  a  general  scholarship.  Mr.  Webster  said 
of  him : 

"  Since  I  left  John  Wheelock,3 1  have  found  no  man  so  inde 
fatigable  in  research.  He  has  great  amenity  of  manners,  is  easy, 
accessible,  and  communicative,  and,  take  him  all  in  all,  I  could 
not  wish  a  better  preceptor." '  This  was  said,  when  Mr.  Web 
ster  had  been  four  months  in  Mr.  Gore's  office  ;  and  his  estimate 
of  Mr.  Gore  never  changed.  That  they  appreciated  each  other 
from  the  first,  is  quite  apparent  from  the  narrative  which  Mr. 
Webster  has  left  us  of  the  mode  in  which  their  acquaintance 
began. 

"  Mr.  Gore  had  just  then  returned  from  England,  and  renewed  the  prac 
tice  of  the  law.  He  had  rooms  in  Scollay's  Building,  and,  as  yet,  had  no 
clerk.  A  young  man,  as  little  known  to  Mr.  Gore  as  myself,  undertook  to 
introduce  me  to  him.  In  logic,  this  would  have  been  bad.  Ignotum  per 
ignotum.  Nevertheless,  it  succeeded  here.  We  ventured  into  Mr.  Gore's 
rooms,  and  my  name  was  pronounced.  I  was  shockingly  embarrassed,  but 
Mr.  Gore's  habitual  courtesy  of  manner  gave  me  courage  to  speak.  I  had 
the  grace  to  begin  with  an  unaffected  apology;  told  him  my  position 
was  very  awkward,  my  appearance  there  very  like  an  intrusion  ;  and  that, 
if  I  expected  any  thing  but  a  civil  dismission,  it  was  only  founded  in  his 

1  It  used  to  be  said  that  Mr.  Gore  the  dignified  accompaniments  of  a  life 

lost  his  election  as   governor,  when  he  of  refinement  and  social  distinction.    But 

was  a  candidate  a  second  time,  by  rea-  they   certainly  were   not   calculated   to 

son  of  his  having  made  a  canvassing  tour  win  votes   at   a   popular   election,  at  a 

through  the  State  in  a  coach-and-four,  time  when  party  spirit   ran  very  high, 

attended  by  servants  in  livery,  and  es-  Mr.    Gore,    however,   never    laid    them 

corted  by  a  troop  of  horse.     When  he  aside  in  consequence  of  his  defeat,  and 

left  the  office  of  governor,  he  retired  to  he  always  retained  the  sincere  respect 

an   elegant   country  -  seat   in  Waltham,  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts.     Dying 

about  nine  miles  from  Boston,  where  he  without  children,  he  left  the  bulk  of  his 

lived  for  the  residue  of  his  life.    He  died  fortune  to  Harvard  College.     The  mod- 

in  1827.     His  chariot,  with  its  crimson  ern  library  of  the  university,  built  from 

hammer-cloth,  his  four  long-tailed  bays,  his   munificent  donation,  was  called  in 

liveried   coachman,  and  mounted   foot-  his  honor  Gore  Hall, 
men  are  among  my  earliest  recollections.  2  The  President  of  Dartmouth  Col- 

But  these  manners  were  not  adopted  by  lege. 

Mr.  Gore  in  a  spirit  of  ostentation,  nor  8   Letter   to   Merrill,    November   30, 

were  they  altogether  singular  in  those  1804. 
days.      In  him,  as  in  others,  they  were 


1804.]  ENTERS  MR.   GORE'S   OFFICE.  65 

known  kindness,  and  generosity  of  character.  I  was  from  the  country,  I 
said  ;  had  studied  law  for  two  years  ;  had  come  to  Boston  to  study  a  year 
more ;  had  some  respectable  acquaintances  in  New  Hampshire,  not  un 
known  to  him,  but  had  no  introduction ;  that  I  had  heard  he  had  no  clerk ; 
thought  it  possible  he  would  receive  one ;  that  I  came  to  Boston  to  work, 
not  to  play ;  was  most  desirous,  on  all  accounts,  to  be  his  pupil ;  and  all 
I  ventured  to  ask  at  present  was,  that  he  would  keep  a  place  for  me  in  his 
office  till  I  could  write  to  New  Hampshire  for  proper  letters,  showing  me 
worthy  of  it.  I  delivered  this  speech  trippingly  on  the  tongue,  though  I 
suspect  it  was  better  composed  than  spoken.  Mr.  Gore  heard  me  with 
much  encouraging  good-nature.  He  evidently  saw  my  embarrassment ; 
spoke  kind  words,  and  asked  me  to  sit  down.  My  friend  had  already  dis 
appeared.  Mr.  Gore  said,  what  I  had  suggested  was  very  reasonable,  and 
required  little  apology.  He  did  not  mean  to  fill  his  office  with  clerks, 
but  was  willing  to  receive  one  or  two,  and  would  consider  what  I  had 
said.  He  inquired,  and  I  told  him,  what  gentlemen  of  his  acquaint- 
tance  knew  me  and  my  father  in  New  Hampshire.  Among  others,  I 
remember  I  mentioned  Mr.  Peabody,  who  was  Mr.  Gore's  class-mate. 
He  talked  to  me  pleasantly  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  ;  and,  when  I 
rose  to  depart,  he  said  :  '  My  young  friend,  you  look  as  though  you 
might  be  trusted.  You  say  you  came  to  study,  and  not  to  waste 
time.  I  will  take  you  at  your  word.  You  may  as  well  hang  up  your 
hat  at  once  ;  go  into  the  other  room  ;  take  your  book,  and  sit  down 
to  reading  it,  and  write  at  your  convenience  to  New  Hampshire  for 
your  letters.' " 

This  immediate  confidence  could  not  have  been  wholly  the 
effect  of  a  morning  of  good-nature,  with  an  easy  gentleman  who 
happened  to  be  quite  at  leisure  and  was  willing  to  trust  to  acci 
dent  for  a  clerk.  The  young  man  who  presented  himself  thus 
unheralded,  before  a  person  of  Mr.  Gore's  fastidious  perceptions, 
could  have  been  no  rustic  bumpkin,  notwithstanding  the  air  of 
embarrassment  which  his  own  modesty  of  narration  has  thrown 
around  the  scene.  Learning  and  mental  discipline,  such  as  he 
had  enjoyed,  do  not  pour  their  riches  into  such  a  nature  as  his, 
without  affecting  the  outer  man  ;  and  genius  and  gentlemanly 
culture  may  be  detected  as  quickly  as  their  opposites,  by  one  who 
is  accustomed  to  note  their  manifestations*  We  know,  too,  that 
later  there  was  a  magnetism,  in  the  presence  of  Mr.  Webster, 
which  all  men  felt,  and  which  has  been  felt  where  his  name  was 
for  the  moment  unknown.  The  same  influence  may  have  existed 
in  his  younger  days ;  or  a  keen  and  practised  observer,  like  Mr. 
Gore,  might  have  seen  in  his  eye,  which  it  wa&  said,  no  man,  even 


66  LIFE   OF   DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IIL 

then,  ever  saw  and  forgot,  some  revelation  of  the  intellect  and 
character  within.1 

But  whether  this  speculation  is  fanciful  or  well  founded,  the 
pleasing  character  of  the  anecdote  remains.  It  connects,  by 
an  incident  honorable  to  both,  the  name  of  the  great  statesman 
with  the  name  of  a  man  whose  pure  and  elevated  character 
made  him  one  of  the  ornaments,  as  his  love  of  letters  made  him 
one  of  the  benefactors,  of  the  society  in  which  he  lived  and  died. 
Mr.  Gore  was  well  fitted  to  direct  the  studies  of  such  a  pupil, 
and  to  supply  and  point  out  to  him  those  sources  of  knowledge 
which  could  not  have  come  within  his  reach  in  New  Hampshire. 

"  I  was  conscious,"  continues  the  autobiography,"  of  having  made  a 
good  stride  onward,  when  I  had  obtained  admission  into  Mr.  Gore's  office. 
It  was  a  situation  which  offered  to  me  the  means  of  studying  books  and 
men  and  things.  It  was  on  the  20th  of  July,  1804,  that  I  first  made  my 
self  known  to  Mr.  Gore ;  and,  although  I  remained  in  his  office  only  till 
March  following,  and  that  with  considerable  intervening  absences,  I  made, 
as  I  think,  some  respectable  progress. 

"In  August  the  Supreme  Court  sat.  I  attended  it  constantly,  and 
reported  every  one  of  its  decisions.  I  did  the  same  in  the  Circuit  Court 
of  the  United  States.  I  kept  a  little  journal  at  that  time,  which  still 
survives.  It  contains  little  besides  a  list  of  books  read. 

"  In  addition  to  books  on  the  common  and  municipal  law,  I  find  I 
read  Vattel  for  the  third  time  in  my  life,  as  is  stated  in  the  journal,  Ward's 
•*  Law  of  Nations,'  Lord  Bacon's  '  Elements,'  Puffendorff 's  '  Latin  History 
of  England,'  Gifford's  Juvenal,  Boswell's  '  Tour  to  the  Hebrides,'  Moore's 
'Travels,'  and  many  other  miscellaneous  things.2 

"  But  my  main  study  was  the  common  law,  and  especially  the  parts  of 
it  which  relate  to  special  pleading.  Whatever  was  in  Yiner,  Bacon,  and 
other  books  then  usually  studied  on  that  part  of  the  science,  I  paid  my 
respects  to.  Among  other  things  I  went  through  Saunders's  Reports, 
the  old  folio  edition,  and  abstracted,  and  put  into  English,  out  of  Latin 
and  Norman-French,  the  pleadings  in  all  his  reports.  It  was  an  edify 
ing  work.  From  that  day  to  this  the  forms  and  language  of  special 
pleas  have  ;been  quite  familiar  to  me.  I  believe  I  have  my  little  abstract 
yet. 

1  Mr.  Webster  mentioned,  with  some  never  have  to  set  out  again." — (Letter  to 

glee,  in  one  of  his  letters  written  at  the  Bingham,  August  4,  1804.) 
time,  that,  in  consequence  of  his  name  2  He  might  have  added  to  this  list 

not  being  distinctly  pronounced  by  his  "  Gibbon's  Life  and  Posthumous  Works," 

companion  who  Introduced  him,  he  had  by  Lord  Sheffield,  and  Paley's  "  Natural 

been  in  the  office  a  week  before   Mr.  Theology."     He  called   the   "  '  Natural 

Gore  knew  his  name.   •"  This,"  he  added,  Theology'  an  ingenious  little  thing." — 

"  I  call  setting  out  in  (the  world.    .    .    .  (Letter  to  Merrill,  May  14,  1805.     Corre- 

But  I  most  devoutly  hope  that  I  shall  spondence,  vol.  i.) 


1804.]  SCHOOL  IN   SHORT   STREET.  67 

"  I  remember,  one  day,  as  I  was  alone  in  the  office,  a  man  came  in,  and 
asked  for  Mr.  Gore.  Mr.  Gore  was  out,  and  he  sat  down  to  wait  for  him. 
He  was  dressed  in  plain  gray  clothes.  I  went  on  with  my  book  till  he 
asked  me  what  I  was  reading,  and,  coming  along  up  to  the  table,  I  held 
out  my  book,  and  he  took  it  and  looked  at  it.  '  Eoccm]  said  he,  '  de 
navibus  et  naulo.  Well,  I  read  that  book,  too,  when  I  was  a  boy  ; '  and 
proceeded  to  talk  not  only  about  *  ships  and  freights,'  but  insurance,  prize, 
and  other  matters  of  maritime  law  in  a  manner  '  to  put  me  up  to  all  I 
knew,' *  and  a  good  deal  more.  The  gray-coated  stranger  turned  out  to 
be  Mr.  Eufus  King."  3 

Men,  indeed,  as  he  has  said,  were  the  objects  of  his  study,  as 
well  as  books.  The  leaders  of  the  Boston  bar,  at  that  time,  were 
Theophilus  Parsons,  afterward  the  celebrated  Chief  Justice  of 
Massachusetts ;  Samuel  Dexter,  the  great  advocate  who,  at  a  later 
period,  argued  against  the  Embargo  for  his  townsmen,  and  "  put 
his  whole  heart"  into  the  cause;3  Harrison  Gray  Otis,  fluent, 
rapid,  classical,  a  graceful  orator,  and  one  of  the  most  ingenious 
of  lawyers ;  James  Sullivan,  a  strong,  laborious,  and  earnest 
man ;  and  Daniel  Davis,  a  skilful  criminal  lawyer,  of  much  ex 
perience  and  ability  as  a  public  prosecutor,  and  for  a  long  time 
Solicitor-General  of  the  State.  How  closely  Mr.  Webster  ob 
served  these  men,  and  how  accurately  he  measured  them,  his 
diary,  kept  while  he  was  in  the  office  of  Mr,  Gore,  abundantly 
proves.  Although  he  might  afterward,  if  he  had  undertaken 
it,  have  drawn  more  elaborate  portraits,  I  doubt  if  he  would  at 
any  subsequent  period  have  changed  any  thing  that  he  then  set 
down.  In  two  or  three  instances  he  sketched  these  eminent 
lawyers  by  a  few  strokes  of  his  pen,  which  at  once  discriminate 
them.4  But  a  kindred  intellect  led  him  to  a  closer  comparison 
of  Dexter  and  Parsons. 

Besides  attending  the  courts  and  studying  the  law,  Mr.  Web 
ster  had,  for  a  time  at  least,  one  other  occupation  in  Boston 
while  he  was  in  the  office  of  Mr.  Gore.  In  August,  1804,  it  be 
came  necessary  for  his  brother  Ezekiel  to  go  to  Hanover,  in 
order  to  take  his  degree ;  and,  during  his  absence,  Daniel  took 

1  For  the  origin  of  the  phrase,  to  put  ton  bar  —  embodies   a  manner  that  is 
a  man  up  to  all  he  knows,  see  post.  not  rare  in  any  age  with  men  of  a  cer- 

2  Autobiography.  tain  vehemence  of  temperament :    "  He 

3  Second  speech  on  Foot's  resolution,  rolls  on  his  cause  with  an  immense  labor, 
— ( Works,  in.,  329.)  deals  in  much  sour  invective,  and  acts 

4  One  of  his  short  descriptions — re-  in  that  way,  as  if  he  supposed  the  court 
fering  to  a  gentleman  then  at  the  Bos-  and  jury  against  him." 


68  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

charge  of  the  little  school  in  Short  Street.  Edward  Everett  was 
one  of  the  pupils  of  the  school  at  that  time ;  and  in  this  relation 
the  friendship  between  Mr.  Webster  and  that  distinguished 
scholar  and  statesman  began,  nearly  fifty  years  before  Mr.  Web 
ster's  death.  George  Ticknor  was  not  a  pupil  of  the  school,  but 
in  1804-' 5  he  received  private  instruction  in  Greek  from  Ezekiel 
Webster,  and  at  his  father's  house  both  the  Websters  and  their 
friend  Perkins  were  frequent  visitors.  That  the  younger  Web-, 
ster  mingled  to  some  extent  in  the  other  society  of  the  town,  is 
apparent  from  his  correspondence  ;  but  his  circle  of  acquaintance 
was  not  large,  and  he  was  too  busy  to  increase  it.  He  appears 
to  have  been  absent  from  Boston  in  November,  1804,  on  an  ex 
cursion  to  Albany,  in  company  with  a  gentleman  who  had  some 
occasion  for  his  services.  They  travelled  in  a  private  carriage 
through  Springfield  to  Albany,  and  thence  came  down  to  Hud 
son,  from  which  place  they  returned  by  way  of  Hartford  and 
Providence  to  Boston. 

The  following  letter  was  written  to  his  brother  from  Al 
bany : 

[TO    EZEKIEL   WEBSTER.] 

"  AKBANT,  November  15,  1801 

"  DEAR  ZEKE  :  Like  other  invalids,  we  have  made  it  an  importani 
point  to  visit  the  Springs.  Yesterday  we  were  at  New  Lebanon.  The 
health  of  both  of  us  is  much  benefited  by  a  visit  to  the  medicinal  waters 
of  that  place.  We  drank,  I  believe,  nearly  a  teaspoonful  apiece,  and,  after 
washing  it  down  with  a  draught  of  wine,  we  really  thought  we  felt  better. 
This  place,  New  Lebanon,  and  Saratoga,  will  be  the  Bath  and  Spa  of 
America.  They  are  now  the  resort  of  the  well  as  well  as  the  sick — of  the 
gay,  the  rich,  and  the  fashionable.  Where  you  look  to  see  every  nook 
and  corner  crowded  by  cripples  and  consumptive  skeletons,  you  find 
taverns,  assembly-rooms,  and  billiard-tables. 

"  Albany  is  no  despicable  place.  To  be  sure,  it  is  irregular,  and  without 
form.  Its  houses  are  generally  old  and  poor-looking — its  streets  are  rather 
dirty — but  there  are  many  exceptions.  A  part  of  the  town  is  very  high, 
overlooking  the  river  in  a  very  pleasant  manner,  and  affording  many  fine 
seats.  Some  handsome  buildings  ornament  the  town.  The  Dutch  Re 
formed  Church  and  the  new  State  Bank  would  not  disgrace  State  Street. 
Here  are  all  sorts  of  people — both  Greek  and  Jew,  Englishman  and  Dutch 
man,  Negro  and  Indian.  Almost  everybody  speaks  English;  occasion 
ally,  though,  I  have  heard  them  talk  among  themselves  in  a  lingo  which  I 
never  learned  even  at  the  Indian  charity  school.  The  river  here  is  half  a 
mile  wide — that  is,  I  should  think  so ;  and,  if  I  think  wrong,  you  must 
look  at  Dr.  Morse,  and  correct  me. 


1805.]  OFFER  OF  A  CLERKSHIP.  69 

"  To-morrow,  weather  being  fair,  we  set  out  on  our  return.  We  shall 
probably  go  by  way  of  Hudson,  Hartford,  etc. 

"Before  I  get  back  to  Boston,  the  time  will  expire  in  which  I  was  to  pay 
Mr.  Howard,  Codman's  Wharf,  for  the  sugar,1  etc.  He  was  promised  his 
cash  by  the  20th  instant.  If  you  will  borrow  it  somewhere,  and  pay  him, 
perhaps  I  can  replace  it  when  I  arrive.  I  am  peculiarly  desirous  of  being 
punctual  in  this  case,  because  Mr.  C.  was  surety  to  Mr.  Howard  that  I 
should  be  so.  Pray  get  it  paid  somehow  before  the  sun  goeth  down  the 
20th.  It  is  about  eighteen  dollars. 

"  Call  in  at  Mr.  Chamberlain's,  and  give  him  and  his  family  my  love.  I 
shall  be  glad  to  get  back  again,  tell  them. 

"  Adieu,  honest  fellow.  "  D.  WEBSTER. 

"And  there  went  abroad  over  all  the  land  an  evil  spirit,  and  it  deluded 
many.  Oh,  good  old  mother  Massachusetts  ! "  2 

This  excursion  gave  Mr.  Webster  an  opportunity  to  see  a  part 
of  the  country  which  he  had  never  visited  before,  and,  of  course, 
it  was  the  first  time  he  had  ever  been  out  of  New  England.  His 
companion  defrayed  the  expenses  of  the  journey,  and  at  the  end 
of  it  Mr.  Webster  wrote  to  Bingham :  "  I  put  my  hand  in  my 
pocket  and  found  one  hundred  and  twenty  dear  delightfuls,  all 
my  own,  yes,  every  dog  of  'em.  I  am  so  proud  to  have  a  dollar 
of  my  own,  I  was  determined  to  tell  you  of  it."  3 

As  he  was  thus  going  on  toward  the  period  of  his  admission 
to  the  bar,  the  worthy  father  at  home,  anxious  and  embarrassed 
in  his  affairs,  was  suddenly  cheered  by  a  plan  for  his  son's  set 
tlement  in  life,  which  would  place  them  all  in  a  position  of  easy 
independence.  The  other  judges  of  the  court  of  which  he  was 
a  member  had  great  regard  for  him,  and,  the  clerk  of  their  court 
having  died,  they  offered  the  place  to  Judge  Webster  for  his  son 

1  Supplies  for  his  father's  family.  all  be  willing   to   give  as  much  to  see 

2  Great  political  changes  took  place  you  in  this  town,  if  we  had  the  change 
in  Massachusetts  at  this  time.  as  handy  as  you  have  in  Boston."     And 

3  Letter  to  Bingham,  January  2, 1805.  then   the  good  girl   tells   him  the  very 
From   an  unexpected   quarter  we   may  little   of    country   news    in    her    small 
learn  the  exact  per  diem  which  made  up  sphere — how  the  people  move  on  in  the 
this  "  dear  delightful "  sum.    In  a  simple-  same  old  way  as  when  he  was  at  home ; 
hearted,  affectionate  letter  from  home,  and  how  they  sometimes  have  "junkets," 
written  by  his  sister  Sarah  (she  of  the  and  sometimes  "  freewillers'  meetings," 
whortleberry  incident),  there  is  a  passage  which   last,   being   interpreted,   were   a 
which  reads  as  follows :  kind  of  "  love-feast "  among  a  portion  of 

"  Before  we  received  your  letters  by  the  Baptists,  not  participated  in,  prob- 
the  mail,  we  heard  that  you  were  gone  ably,  by  the  orthodox  Webster  family, 
to  New  York  with  a  gentleman,  at  the  There  is  a  postscript  to  the  lady's  let- 
moderate  price  of  seven  dollars  a  day  for  ter,  but  it  was  dictated  and  signed  by 
your  company.  It  seems,  Daniel,  that  the  father ;  and  it  reveals  a  cause  for 
your  company  is  very  agreeable  in  Bos-  the  satisfaction  with  which  Daniel  re- 
ton  as  well  as  in  Salisbury.  We  should  garded  his  earnings. 


70  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

Daniel.  The  joyful  news  was  quickly  communicated  to  the  lat 
ter  in  Boston.  Here  was  another  temptation,  and  a  stronger 
one  than  the  Fryeburg  preferment  held  out ;  for  it  was  a  better 
situation,  and  it  was  one,  moreover,  that  would  put  him  at  once 
where  his  parents  and  his  sisters  could  have  the  benefit  of  his 
society  as  well  as  his  pecuniary  aid.  But  I  cannot  relate  his 
perplexities  and  contradictory  feelings  as  he  has  related  them 
himself,  and  I  therefore  compile  a  narrative  of  the  manner 
in  which  he  met  this  singular  event  in  his  life,  from  the  two 
ample  sources  that  are  before  me.  One  of  these  accounts, 
which  is  contained  in  his  Autobiography,  has  been  published 
several  years.  The  other,  which  is  in  some  respects  still  more 
graphic  and  detailed,  was  given  in  the  conversation  of  1825, 
to  which  I  have  more  than  once  referred,  and  which  has  not 
hitherto  been  made  public.  The  colloquial  narrative  begins  in 
this  way : 

"  In  1804,  the  Clerk  of  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas  of  Hillsborough 
County  died,  and  Chief-Justice  Farrar  immediately  offered  the  place  to 
me.  The  receipts  of  this  office  were  full  fifteen  hundred  dollars  a  year, 
and  you  may  imagine  that  I  felt  as  if  my  fortune  was  made.  My  brother 
and  I  were  both  in  debt,  our  father  was  old,  and  his  estate  mortgaged.  I 
had  been  looking  to  this  office,  but  hardly  with  hope,  and  here  it  was — 
here  was  the  appointment  to  what,  as  I  may  say,  had  been  the  ambition  of 
the  family  ever  since  the  Revolution.  It  was  fifteen  hundred  a  year.  Why, 
I  could  pay  all  the  debts  of  the  family,  could  help  on  Ezekiel — in  short,  I 
was  independent.  I  had  no  sleep  that  night  ;  and,  the  next  morning, 
when  I  went  to  the  office,  I  stepped  up  the  stairs  with  a  lighter  heart  than 
I  ever  had  before.  I  told  Mr.  Gore  of  my  good  fortune.  '  Well,  my  young 
friend,'  said  he,  '  the  gentlemen  have  been  very  kind  to  you ;  I  am  glad  of 
it.  You  must  thank  them  for  it.  Certainly  they  are  very  good  ;  you 
must  write  them  a  civil  letter.  You  will  write  immediately,  of  course.'  I 
told  him  that  I  felt  their  kindness  and  liberality  very  deeply ;  that  I  should 
certainly  thank  them  in  the  best  manner  I  was  able ;  but  that  I  should  go 
up  to  Salisbury  so  soon,  I  hardly  thought  it  was  necessary  to  write.  He 
looked  at  me  as  if  he  was  greatly  surprised.  *  Why,'  said  he,  '  you  don't 
mean  to  accept  it,  surely  ! '  The  bare  idea  of  not  accepting  it  so  astounded 
me  that  I  should  have  been  glad  to  have  found  any  hole  to  have  hid  my 
self  in  ;  the  very  centre  of  Symmes's  would  have  been  welcome  to  me.  i 
told  him,  as  soon  as  I  could  speak,  that  I  had  no  thought  of  any  thing 
else.  'Well,'  said  he,  '  you  must  decide  for  yourself;  but  come,  sit  down, 
and  let  us  talk  it  over.  The  office  is  worth  fifteen  hundred  a  year,  you 
say. .  Well,  it  never  will  be  any  more.  Ten  to  one,  if  they  find  out  it  is  so 


1805.]  REFUSES  THE   CLERKSHIP.  7i 

much,  the  fees  will  be  reduced.1  You  are  appointed  now  by  friends  ; 
others  may  fill  their  places  who  are  of  different  opinions,  and  who  have 
Mends  of  their  own  to  provide  for.  You  will  lose  your  place ;  or,  sup 
posing  you  to  retain  it,  what  are  you  but  a  clerk  for  life  ?  And  your  pros 
pects  as  a  lawyer  are  good  enough  to  encourage  you  to  go  on.  Go  on, 
and  finish  your  studies ;  you  are  poor  enough,  but  there  are  greater  evils 
than  poverty ;  live  on  no  man's  favor ;  what  bread  you  do  eat,  let  it  be  the 
bread  of  independence ;  pursue  your  profession,  make  yourself  useful  to 
your  friends,  and  a  little  formidable  to  your  enemies,  and  you  have  nothing 
to  fear.' 

"  I  could  say  nothing  to  all  this,  and  Mr.  Gore's  opinion  that  I  could 
do  something  as  a  lawyer  encouraged  and  flattered  me.  He  told  me  to 
come  the  next  morning,  and  talk  a  little  more  with  him ;  I  went  home, 
and  passed  another  sleepless  night. 

"  The  obtaining  this  office  had  been  a  darling  object  with  my  father. 
Its  possession  would  make  the  family  easy ;  and  he  had  hastened  to  send 
me  word  that  the  prize  was  won.  I  certainly  considered  it  a  great  prize 
myself,  not  that  I  did  not  love  my  profession,  not  that  I  did  not  hate  the 
clerkship,  and  all  clerkships,  but  simply  from  a  desire  to  reach  that  high 
point  of  terrestrial  bliss,  at  which  I  could  feel  that  there  was  a  competency 
for  our  family,  myself  included.  I  had  felt  the  res  angustw  till  my  very 
bones  ached.  Mr.  Gore  peremptorily  shut  me  out  from  this  opening  para 
dise.3  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  acquiesced  in  his  good  advice,  though  it 
certainly  cost  me  a  pang.  Here  was  present  comfort,  competency,  and,  I 
may  even  say,  riches,  as  I  then  viewed  things,  all  ready  to  be  enjoyed,  and 
I  was  called  upon  to  reject  them  for  the  uncertain  and  distant  prospect  of 
professional  success.  But  I  did  resist  the  temptation ;  I  did  hold  on  to 
the  hope  which  the  law  set  before  me.  One  very  difficult  task  remained, 
however,  to  be  performed,  and  that  was  to  reconcile  my  father  to  my  de 
cision.  I  knew  it  would  strike  him  like  a  thunder-bolt.  He  had  long  had 
this  office  in  view  for  me.  Its  income  would  make  him,  and  make  us  all, 
easy  and  comfortable ;  his  health  was  bad,  and  growing  worse.  His  sons 
were  all  gone  from  him.  This  office  would  bring  me  home,  and  it  would 
bring  also  comfort  and  competency  '  to  all  the  house.'  It  was  now  mid 
winter. 

"Well,  sir,"  continued  Mr.  Webster,  in  1825,  "after  talking  further 
with  Mr.  Gore,  I  made  up  my  mind  to  refuse  the  clerkship  at  all  risks.  I 
went  to  Mr.  Taylor,3  and  told  him  I  wanted  some  money,  and  that  I  should 
pay  him  some  time  or  other.  He  said  I  should  have  as  much  as  I  wanted. 

1  The  MS.  adds,  "  Within  two  years  left  college,  but  who  was  not  either  of 
of  this  time  the  fees  were  reduced."  those  whom  he  had  known  at  Hanover. 

2  Mr.  Webster,  at  this  time,  had  no  But    this   affair   never    proceeded   very 
thought  of  marrying.     He  had  not  even  far,   and   he   had   entirely  dismissed   it 
met  the  lady  who  afterward  became  his  from  his  mind  before  he  went  to  Bos- 
wife.     He  had  been  somewhat  interested  ton. 

in  another  lady,  who  is  occasionally  re-  3  Mr.  Joseph  Taylor,  a  connection  of 
ferred  to  in  his  letters  written  after  he  the  Amory  family. 


72  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  III. 

I  told  him  I  must  have  a  good  deal — three  or  four  hundred  dollars.  He 
gave  it  to  me,  and,  with  this  in  my  pocket,  I  hired  a  sleigh,1  and  set  off 
for  home.  I  got  home  one  afternoon,  just  at  sunset,  and  saw  my  father  in 
his  little  room,  sitting  in  his  arm-chair.  He  was  pretty  old  then,  and  tall, 
and  very  thin.  His  face  was  pale,  and  his  cheek  sunken,  and  his  eyes — 
which  were  always  large,  and  very  black — seemed  larger  and  blacker  than 
I  ever  saw  them.  He  seemed  glad  to  see  me,  and,  almost  as  soon  as  I  sat 
down,  he  said :  '  Well,  Daniel,  we  have  got  that  office  for  you.'  '  Yes, 
father,'  said  I,  '  the  gentlemen  were  very  kind,  I  must  go  and  thank  them.' 
*  They  gave  it  to  you  without  my  saying  a  word  about  it.'  '  1  must  go 
and  see  Judge  Farrar,  and  tell  him  I  am  much  obliged  to  him.'  And  so  I 
talked  about  it  very  carelessly,  and  tried  to  make  my  father  understand 
me.  At  last  he  began  to  have  some  suspicion  of  what  I  meant ;  and  he 
straightened  himself  up  in  his  chair,  and  looked  at  me  as  if  he  would  look 
me  through.  *  Daniel,  Daniel,'  said  he,  '  don't  you  mean  to  take  that 
office  ? '  '  No,  indeed,  father,'  said  I ;  '  I  hope  I  can  do  much  better  than 
that.  I  mean  to  use  my  tongue  in  the  courts,  not  my  pen ;  to  be  an  actor, 
not  a  register  of  other  men's  acts.  I  hope  yet,  sir,  to  astonish  your  honor 
in  your  own  court  by  my  professional  attainments.' 

"  For  a  moment  I  thought  he  was  angry.  He  rocked  his  chair, 
slightly ;  a  flash  went  over  an  eye,  softened  by  age,  but  still  as  black  as 
jet ;  but  it  was  gone,  and  I  thought  I  saw  that  parental  partiality  was, 
after  all,  a  little  gratified  at  this  apparent  devotion  to  an  honorable  pro 
fession,  and  this  seeming  confidence  of  success  in  it.  He  looked  at  me 
for  as  much  as  a  minute,  and  then  said  very  slowly,  '  Well,  my  son,  your 
mother  has  always  said  you  would  come  to  something  or  nothing.  She 
was  not  sure  which ;  I  think  you  are  now  about  settling  that  doubt  for 
her.'  This  he  said,  and  never  a  word  spoke  more  to  me  on  the  subject. 
I  stayed  at  home  a  week,  paid  any  little  bills  that  came  in,  bought  what 
was  necessary  for  the  family,  promised  to  come  to  him  again  as  soon  as  I 
was  admitted  to  the  bar,  and  returned  to  Boston." 

The  time  was  now  approaching  for  his  admission  to  the 
bar,  and  the  choice  of  a  place  of  settlement.  "  In  some  country 
town  in  New  Hampshire,"  he  writes  to  one  of  his  friends  just 
before  his  admission,  "  I  shall  probably  put  off  my  character 
of  a  rover,  and  fix  my  feet  for  a  season.  Having  been  for  the 
winter  .a  wandering  comet,  in  the  spring  I  become  a  falling 
star,  and  shall  drop  from  the  firmament  of  Boston  gayety  and 
pleasure  to  the  level  of  a  rustic  village — of  silence  and  ob 
scurity."8 

1  He  means  that  he  hired  a  seat  in  a  ran  into  the  centre  of  New  Hampshire 

country  sleigh  that  had  come  down  to  the  than  they  ran  to  Baffin's  Bay." 
market.      At  that  time,  he  says  in  the          2   Letter   to   Mr.    Fuller,  March    10, 

Autobiography,  "  Stage-coaches  no  more  1805. 


1805.]  BEGINS  PRACTICE  IN  BOSCAWEN.  73 

He  was  admitted  to  practice  in  March,  1805,  in  the  Court  of 
Common  Pleas  in  Boston,  on  the  motion  of  Mr.  Gore.  It  was 
the  custom  then  for  the  patron  to  make  a  short  speech  intro 
ducing  the  pupil  to  the  court.  It  is  a  well-known  tradition 
that  on  this  occasion  Mr.  Gore  predicted  the  future  eminence  of 
his  young  friend.  "What  he  said  has  not  been  preserved ;  but 
that  he  said  what  Mr.  Webster  never  forgot,  that  it  was  dis 
tinctly  a  prediction,  and  that  it  excited  in  him  a  resolve  that 
it  should  not  go  unfulfilled,  we  have  upon  his  own  authority, 
although  he  appears  to  have  been  unwilling  to  repeat  the  words 
of  Mr.  Gore's  address.1  This  ceremony  being  over,  he  went  im 
mediately  to  Amherst,  in  New  Hampshire,  where  his  father  then 
was,  attending  a  session  of  the  court.  It  was  his  wish  at  this 
time  to  settle  in  Portsmouth ;  but  he  resolved  not  to  leave  the 
immediate  neighborhood  of  Salisbury  during  his  father's  life. 
Accordingly,  he  established  himself  in  the  adjoining  village  of 
Boscawen  ;  and  there,  in  the  spring  of  1805,  he  began  the  life 
of  a  country  lawyer. 

Before  he  left  Boston,  he  had  made  a  considerable  purchase 
of  books,  for  which  he  was  to  remit  the  money  from  New  Hamp 
shire.  The  money  was  forwarded,  but  the  letter  containing  it 
was  stolen  from  the  messenger  before  it  reached  the  hands  of 
Ezekiel.  Many  letters  passed  between  the  brothers,  and  many 
plans  were  devised  for  raising  another  sum  sufficient  to  obtain 
the  books.  At  first,  Ezekiel  was  desired  to  wait  upon  the  book 
seller,  explain  the  loss,  and  request  that  the  books  might  be  put 
again  upon  his  shelves.  At  length  it  was  arranged  that  Ezekiel 
should  ask  Mr.  Thacher,  a  member  of  the  Boston  bar,  to  become 
surety  for  the  payment ;  to  which  that  gentleman  at  once 
assented.  * 

Furnished  with  this  security,  Ezekiel  repaired  to  the  book 
seller's  shop,  tendered  the  indorsement  of  Mr.  Thacher  upon  his 
own  note,  and  asked  for  the  books.  But  the  worthy  bibliopole 
refused  all  security,  kindly  forwarded  the  books,  and  gave  all 
the  credit  that  was  asked.  He  lived  to  witness  Mr.  Webster's 
whole  career.2 

Books,  indeed,  were  quite  essential  to  his  existence  where  he 

1   See  the  Autobiography. — (Corre-          2  The  bookseller  was  Mr.  Samuel  H. 
spondence,  i.,  20.  Parker. 


74  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IIL 

now  was.  The  life  wliicli  he  led  at  JBoscawen,  for  two  years 
and  a  half,  would  have  been  insupportable  without  them.  He 
described  it  in  his  letters  as  "  a  life  of  writs  and  summonses." 
"  Other  mechanics  do  pretty  well  here,"  he  said,  "  and  I  am 
determined  to  try  my  luck  among  others."  ' 

There  was  no  congenial  society  for  him,  and  he  yet  wanted 
that  support  which  other  young  men,  similarly  situated,  have 
found,  from  having  formed  that  tender  connection  which  may 
be  the  solace  of  present  silence  and  obscurity,  even  when  the 
beloved  object  is  far  away.  He  was  not  in  love,  and  apparently 
he  was  not  likely  to  be.  He  endured  "  the  burden  of  perpetual 
solitude  and  seclusion,"  by  devoting  himself  to  business  and 
study.  His  practice  extended  over  three  counties,  Hillsborough, 
Rockingham,  and  Grafton.2  It  amounted  to  not  more  than  six 
or  seven  hundred  dollars  a  year  ;  but  this  was  sufficient  for  his 
support,  besides  leaving  a  small  sum  for  the  increase  of  his 
library.  His  studies  during  this  period  were  various,  and  more 
extensive,  I  imagine,  than  they  were  during  the  same  length  of 
time  at  any  former  portion  of  his  life,  especially  in  the  law  and 
in  history.  With  what  energy  he  continued  to  resist  the  influ 
ences  of  that  kind  of  practice  in  which  most  young  men  must 
begin  their  professional  life,  how  he  labored  at  this  time  to 
make  himself  a  real  lawyer,  and  how  well  he  estimated  the 
means  that  were  to  make  him  one,  his  correspondence  shows. 
After  reading  what  is  now  to  be  quoted,  no  one  need  be  sur 
prised  that,  as  soon  as  he  stepped  forth  from  that  little  village 
in  the  interior  of  JS"ew  Hampshire,  he  stood  at  once  the  equal 
and  the  competitor  of  men  who  were  many  years  his  seniors, 
and  who  had  long  occupied  the  foremost  places  at  the  bar  of 
"New  England.8 

"  Study  is  the  grand  requisite  for  a  lawyer.  Men  may  be  born  poets, 
and  leap  from  their  cradle  painters ;  Nature  may  have  made  them  musi- 

1  He  revenged  himself  upon  the  writs  musical  form,  it  will   certainly  be   the 

and  summonses  by  turning   them  into  most  harmonious  thing  they  ever  did." 

verse  :  — (Letter  to  Bingham,  January  19,  1806.) 

"All  good  sheriffs  in  the  land,  2  "  Scattering  business  over  so  much 

We  command,  surface,"  he  said,  "  is  like  spilling  water 

That  fortMOjoa  arrest  John  Dyer,  upon  ^  ground>, 

If  in  your  precinct  you  can  find  him,  3  Mr.  Webster  has  said  in  his  Auto- 

And  bind  him,"  etc.,  etc.  biography  (written  in  1829),  that,  with 

He  then  adds  :   "  If  the  Legislature  will  the  exception  of  instances  in  which  he 

but  put  our  writs  into  a  poetical  and  had  been  associated  with  the  Attorney. 


1806.] 


DEATH  OF  HIS  FATHER. 


70 


cians,  and  called  on  them  only  to  exercise,  and  not  to  acquire,  ability ; 
but  law  is  artificial.  It  is  a  human  science,  to  be  learned,  not  inspired. 
Let  there  be  a  genius  for  whom  Nature  has  done  so  much  as  apparently  to 
have  left  nothing  for  application,  yet,  to  make  a  lawyer,  application  must 
do  as  much  as  if  Nature  had  done  nothing.  The  evil  is,  that  an  accursed 
thirst  for  money  violates  every  thing.  We  cannot  study,  because  we  must 
pettifog.  We  learn  the  low  recourses  of  attorneyism,  when  we  should 
learn  the  conceptions,  the  reasonings,  and  the  opinions  of  Cicero  and 
Murray.  The  love  of  fame  is  extinguished,  every  ardent  wish  for  knowl 
edge  repressed ;  conscience  put  in  jeopardy,  and  the  best  feelings  of  the 
heart  indurated  by  the  mean,  money-catching,  abominable  practices  which 
cover  with  disgrace  a  part  of  the  modem  practitioners  of  the  law.  .  .  . 
Our  profession  is  good,  if  practised  in  the  spirit  of  it ;  it  is  damnable 
fraud  and  iniquity  when  its  true  spirit  is  supplied  by  a  spirit  of  mischief- 
making  and  money-catching."  * 


BURIAL-PLACE  AT  FRANKLIN. 


His  first  speech  at  the  bar  was  made  during  the  first  year 
of  his  residence  at  Boscawen,  and  after  the  lapse  of  forty  years 
he  remembered  with  the  deepest  tenderness  that  his  father  heard 
it.a  But  his  father  never  heard  him  a  second  time.  He  appears 
to  have  been  unable  to  go  abroad  during  the  succeeding  winter, 
and  he  died  in  April,  1806.  In  a  burial-place  set  apart  in  his 

General  of  the  United   States,  he  had          2  Letter  to   Mr.  Blatchford,  written 

hardly  ten  times   in   his   life   acted   as  from   Franklin,    May   3,    1846.  —  (Corre- 

junior  counsel.  spondence,  ii.,  225.)     He  states  the  same 

1  Letter  to  Bingham,  January  19,  1806.  fact  in  the  Autobiography. 


76  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  Ill 

own  field,  "  beneath  the  shadows  of  a  tall  pine,"  he  was  laid  by 
filial  hands.  Writing  from  that  spot,  when  he  was  nearly  of 
the  same  age  at  which  his  father  died,  Mr.  Webster  said :  "I 
neither  left  him  nor  forsook  him.  My  opening  an  office  in 
Boscawen  was,  that  I  might  be  near  him.  I  closed  his  eyes  in 
this  very  house.  He  died  at  sixty-seven  years  of  age,  after  a 
life  of  exertion,  toil,  and  exposure :  a  private  soldier,  an  officer, 
a  legislator,  a  judge,  every  thing  that  a  man  could  be  to  whom 
learning  never  had  disclosed  her  i  ample  page.' ' 

It  is  not  easy  to  determine  whether  Mr.  Webster's  first 
speech,  which  he  says  was  made  when  his  father  "  was  on  the 
bench,"  was  made  in  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas,  of  which  his 
father  was  a  judge,  or  in  the  Superior  Court  of  Judicature  of 
which  the  Honorable  Jeremiah  Smith  was  the  chief  justice.  The 
local  tradition  in  the  county  of  Grafton,  at  the  period  of  Mr. 
Webster's  death,  was  that  his  first  cause  was  a  case  of  some  no 
toriety,  that  was  tried  in  1805,  at  Plymouth  in  that  county,  in 
the  Superior  Court,  and  that  Judge  Smith  was  on  the  bench.8  If 
this  was  the  case  in  which  his  father  heard  him,  Judge  Webster 
must  have  been  invited  to  take  a  seat  on  the  bench  according 
to  the  usual  courtesy,  but  he  could  not  have  been  present  in  his 
official  capacity,  as  he  was  a  member  of  an  inferior  court.  Nor 
could  his  son,  in  the  year  1805,  have  been  entitled  to  argue  a 
cause  to  the  jury  in  the  Superior  Court,  since  he  was  not 
admitted  as  a  counsellor  of  that  court  until  1807.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  something  more  authentic  than  a  tradition, 
respecting  a  cause  which  was  tried  before  Chief-Justice  Smith, 
in  what  was  then  the  county  of  Hillsborough,  in  1806,  and  in 
which  Mr.  Webster  was  allowed  to  take  the  part  of  junior 
counsel ;  and  it  was  after  hearing  him  in  this  case  that  Judge 
Smith  is  said  to  have  remarked,  on  leaving  the  court-house, 
that  "  he  had  never  before  met  such  a  young  man  as  that." 8 
Both  of  these  were  civil  cases.  There  is  also  an  account  of  a 
very  powerful  speech  which  he  made  in  defence  of  a  person 

1  Letter  to   Mr.  Blatchford,  written  sell,  a  gentleman  who  visited  Plymouth 
from   Franklin,  May  3,  1846.  —  (Corre-  at  that  time,  and  carefully  gathered  the 
spondence,  it,  225.)  tradition  of  what  was  there  supposed  to 

2  My  authority  for  this  statement  is  a  have  been  Mr.  Webster's  first  cause, 
letter  addressed  to  one  of  the  literary  8  See  Morrison's  "  Life  of  Chief-Jus- 
executors,  in  1853,  by  Mr.  Alfred  Rus-  tice  Smith,"  pp.  179,  180.    Boston,  1845. 


1806.J  WRITES   FOR   THE   "ANTHOLOGY."  77 

indicted  for  murder  and  tried  in  the  Superior  Court  in  Grafton 
County.  It  is  said  that  the  senior  counsel  abandoned  the  cause 
after  hearing  the  evidence,  leaving  to  Mr.  Webster  the  whole 
burden  of  summing  up  to  the  jury.  But  it  is  scarcely  needful  to 
trace  the  precise  degree  of  accuracy  with  which  these  several 
accounts  have  come  down  to  us,  or  to  determine  which  of  them 
is  to  be  regarded  as  his  first  cause.  It  is  enough  to  know  that, 
before  he  left  the  interior  of  the  State,  he  had  produced  an 
impression  which  is  even  now  not  effaced,  and  that  different 
counties  have  contended  for  the  honor  of  having  been  the 
scene  of  his  first  effort  at  the  bar.1 

In  the  Autobiography,  all  that  he  says  further,  respecting 
the  period  of  his  residence  in  Boscawen,  is  embraced  in  the 
following  short  paragraph : 

"  The  two  years  and  a  half  which  I  spent  in  Boscawen  were  devoted  to 
business  and  study.  I  had  enough  of  the  first  to  live  on,  and  to  afford 
opportunity  for  practice  and  discipline.  I  read  law  and  history ;  not 
without  some  mixture  of  other  things.  These  were  the  days  of  the 
Boston  Anthology  ;  and  I  had  the  honor  of  being  a  contributor  to  that 
publication.  There  are  sundry  reviews  written  by  me,  not  worth  looking 
up  or  remembering." 

But,  slight  as  was  the  interest  which,  in  1829,  he  thought 
might  be  attached  to  these  things,  they  are  not  to  be  passed 
over  without  mention.  His  contributions  to  the  Monthly  An- 

1  Although  I  am  unable  definitely  to  when  the  trial  came  on,  the  attorney- 
assign  this  honor,  I  can  add  to  the  anec-  general  was  ill,  and  the  prosecutors 
dotes  of  this  period  the  following  ac-  asked  that  Webster  should  be  allowed 
count  of  Mr.  Webster's  first  encounter  to  conduct  the  case.  I  assented  to  this 
with  Mr.  Jeremiah  Mason,  of  Portsmouth,  readily,  thinking  I  ought  to  have  an  easy 
which  was  given  to  me  by  Mr.  Mason  time  of  it;  and  we  were  introduced  to 
himself.  A  man,  who  had  previously  each  other.  We  went  at  it,  and  I  soon 
held  a  respectable  position  in  one  of  the  found  that  I  had  no  light  work  on  my 
counties  where  Mr.  Webster  then  prac-  hands.  He  examined  his  witnesses,  and 
tised,  was  indicted  for  forgery.  Mr.  shaped  his  case  with  so  much  skill,  that 
Mason,  as  the  leading  counsel  in  New  I  had  to  exert  every  faculty  I  possessed. 
Hampshire,  was  sent  for,  on  a  special  re-  I  got  the  man  off,  but  it  was  as  hard  a 
tainer,  to  defend  him.  "  I  had  heard,"  day's  work  as  I  ever  did  in  my  life, 
said  Mr.  Mason,  "  that  there  was  a  young  There  were  other  transactions  behind 
lawyer  up  there,  who  was  reputed  to  be  this  one  which  looked  quite  as  awkward, 
a  wonderfully  able  fellow ;  and  was  said  When  the  verdict  was  announced,  I  went 
by  the  country  people  to  be  as  black  as  up  to  the  dock,  and  whispered  to  the 
the  ace  of  spades,  but  I  had  never  seen  prisoner,  as  the  sheriff  let  him  out,  to  be 
him.  When  they  told  me  that  he  had  off  for  Canada,  and  never  to  put  himself 
prepared  the  evidence  for  this  prosecu-  within  the  reach  of  that  young  Webster 
tion,  I  thought  it  well  to  be  careful,  again.  From  that  time  forth  I  never 
especially  as  the  trial  was  to  be  con-  lost  sight  of  Mr.  Webster,  and  never  had 
ducted  by  the  attorney  -  general.  But  but  one  opinion  of  his  powers." 


78  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

thology  were  four ;  in  1806,  a  review  of  a  Treatise  on  Polit 
ical  Economy,  by  Tunis  Mortman ;  in  1807,  a  review  of  the 
first  volume  of  Johnson's  (New  York)  Keports,  and  an  article 
on  the  French  language  ;  in  1808,  a  review  of  Lawe's  Trea 
tise  on  Pleading.1 

After  his  father's  death,  Mr.  Webster  waited  only  for  his 
brother's  admission  to  the  bar,  so  that  he  could  relinquish  to 
him  the  office  in  Boscawen,  and  that  his  mother  and  sisters 
might  have  a  protector  at  hand.  He  had  assumed  the  burden 
of  his  father's  debts ;  and  in  the  autumn  of  1807,  Ezekiel  took 
charge  of  the  farm  on  which  the  family  had  been  left,  and  suc 
ceeded  to  the  law  business  at  Boscawen.  From  that  time  the 
care  of  their  mother  and  sisters  was  shared  between  them.  In 
September  of  that  year,  Daniel  removed  to  Portsmouth.  He 
had  been  admitted  as  a  counsellor  of  the  Superior  Court  in  the 
preceding  May.2 

Of  Mr.  Webster's  political  principles  or  his  connection  with 
political  affairs,  down  to  the  time  of  his  removal  to  Portsmouth, 
it  is  necessary  to  say  but  little,  partly  because  his  political 
principles  were  very  simple,  and  partly  because  his  connection 
with  political  affairs,  before  the  year  1812,  was  less  than  is 
commonly  maintained  by  young  American  lawyers.  I  have 
already  intimated  that  his  father,  from  having  served  under 
Washington  in  the  Revolution,  was  of  that  class  of  men  who 
deemed  that  they  could  best  discharge  their  duty  to  their  coun 
try  by  following  in  the  footsteps  of  Washington  in  civil  affairs. 
These  old  officers  of  the  Revolution,  after  their  great  chief  had 
retired  from  public  life,  endeavored  to  shape  their  political 
conduct  by  the  maxims  which  they  believed  had  been  incul 
cated  in  his  "  Farewell  Address."  That  many  of  these  men, 
scattered  through  the  country,  after  the  formation  of  the  polit 
ical  parties,  gravitated  into  the  Federal  party  ;  that  they 
tempered  its  counsels  by  their  moderation  and  their  sober  pa 
triotism  ;  that  they  gave  to  its  opposition  to  the  measures  of 

1  The  Monthly  Anthology  was   pub-  2    His    assumption    of   his    father's 

lished   in   Boston,  from   1804   to   1811.  debts  continued  to  weigh  upon  him  as 

In  the  Boston  Public  Library  there  is  a  a  heavy  burden  for  many  years.    In  fact, 

copy  of  the  work,  in  which  the  names  he  did  not  entirely  free  himself  from  it 

of  the  writers  are  noted.     The  Anthology  until   after   he   removed   to   Boston,  in 

was  the  forerunner  of  the  North  Amen-  1817. — (Ticknor  MSS.) 
can  Review. 


1806.]  NEW-HAMPSHIRE  FEDERALISM.  79 

Government,  when  the  Government  passed  into  the  hands  of 
their  opponents,  a  consistent  adherence  to  the  spirit  and  pur 
poses  of  the  Constitution,  and  that  they  prevented  some  of  the 
excesses  to  which  an  opposition  is  prone,  are  facts  which 
require  now  no  formal  proof.  That  this  was  eminently  the 
tone  of  the  New-Hampshire  Federalists,  no  one  will  doubt  who 
is  acquainted  with  the  political  history  of  that  State.  It  was  in 
that  New-Hampshire  school  of  Federal  politics  that  Mr.  Web 
ster  was  educated.  To  this  circumstance,  as  well  as  to  the 
breadth  and  comprehensiveness  of  his  intellect,  we  are  to 
ascribe  the  fact,  that  although  he  entered  public  life  at  a  period 
when  party  spirit  was  exceedingly  virulent,  he  was  never  at 
any  time  in  his  whole  career  a  very  warm  partisan,  and  never 
had  any  great  faith  in  the  utility  of  parties,  while  he  submitted 
to  them  as  a  necessity,  and  like  a  wise  and  practical  statesman 
regulated  his  cooperation  with  them  as  a  choice  between  evils 
which  he  could  not  prevent.  In  regard  to  his  connection  with 
political  aifairs  before  the  year  1812,  after  having  indicated  the 
political  school  in  which  it  may  be  said  he  was  born  and  edu 
cated,  there  is  little  more  to  be  said.  For,  although  before  his 
removal  to  Portsmouth,  he  kept  up  an  intelligent  interest  in 
public  aifairs,  and  although  his  range  of  knowledge  on  such 
subjects  was  far  greater  than  that  of  most  educated  men  at  the 
same  period  who  were  much  older  in  years,  yet  his  active  par 
ticipation  in  politics  was  very  slight,  and  his  concern  in  the 
management  of  party  machinery  amounted  to  almost  nothing. 
He  did,  in  1804,  at  the  request  of  his  friends,  when  visiting  his 
father  from  Boston,  write  a  political  pamphlet  to  promote  the 
election  of  Governor  Gilman,  the  candidate  of  the  Federalists. 
It  was  called  "  An  Appeal  to  Old  Whigs ;  "  being,  of  course,  an 
exhortation  to  those  who  had  been  Whigs  in  the  Revolution. 
But  even  then  he  felt  no  very  strong  party  interest  in  his  pro 
duction.1  He  also,  as  he  has  mentioned,  delivered  an  oration 
on  the  fourth  of  July,  at  three  several  times  between  the  period 
of  his  leaving  college  and  his  removal  to  Portsmouth.  But  he 

1  He  said  of  it,  whimsically  enough,  the  very  few  who  know  the  author  of  the 

a  year  later,  "  Last  year  I  wrote  a  politi-  '  Appeal  to  the  Old  Whigs.'     Keep  the 

cal  pamphlet  in  two  days,  which  I  have  precious  secret." — (Letter  to  his  class- 

had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  kicked  about  mate  Bingham,  January  19,  1806.     Cor- 

under  many  tables.    But  you  are  one  of  respondence,  vol.  i.) 


80  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  III. 

was  pressed  into  this  service  more  on  account  of  his  literary 
and  oratorical  accomplishments,  than  on  account  of  his  activity 
or  zeal  as  a  politician.  JSTone  of  these  discourses  are  of  any 
importance,  excepting  in  a  literary  point  of  view ;  and,  in  this 
respect,  all  of  them  that  have  survived  exhibit  the  growth  of 
his  power  of  expression  and  an  approach  to  that  pure  and 
vigorous  English  of  which  he  afterward  became  so  great  a  mas 
ter.  But  his  political  character  should  not  begin  to  be  studied 
before  he  wrote  the  "  Rockingham  Memorial "  in  1812,  or  at  least 
until  the  year  1808,  when  he  published  a  small  pamphlet  on 
the  Embargo.  This  chapter,  therefore,  may  be  concluded  with 
what  he  has  himself  said  on  the  subject  of  his  connection  with 
political  affairs  prior  to  1808  : 

"  I  have  never  held  office,  popular  or  other,  in  the  government  of  New 
Hampshire.  -  My  time  was  always  exclusively  given  to  my  profession  till 
1812,  when  the  war  commenced.  I  had  occasionally  taken  part  in  politi 
cal  questions,  always  felt  an  interest  in  elections,  and  contributed  my  part, 
I  believe,  to  the  political  ephemera  of  the  day.  Indeed,  I  always  felt  an 
interest  in  political  concerns.  My  lucubrations  for  the  press  go  back,  I 
believe,  to  my  sixteenth  year.  They  are,  or  ought  to  be,  all  forgotten,  at 
least,  most  of  them ;  and  all  of  this  early  period. 

"  When  I  visited  my  father  from  Boston,  in  January  or  February,  1804, 
a  severe  political  contest  was  going  on  between  Governor  Gilman  and 
Governor  Langdon.  The  friends  of  the  former,  and  they  were  my  friends, 
wanted  a  pamphlet,  and  I  was  pressed  to  write  one.  I  did  the  deed, 
I  believe,  at  a  single  sitting  of  a  winter's  day  and  night.  Among 
other  things  of  a  similar  kind,  it  is  certainly  not  despicable.  It  is 
called  an  "  Appeal  to  Old  Whigs."  Like  other  young  men,  I  made  fourth 
of  July  orations— at  Fryeburg,  1802  ;  at  Salisbury,  1805  ;  at  Concord,  1806, 
which  was  published  ;  and  at  Portsmouth,  1812,  published  also. 

"  August,  1812, 1  wrote  the  '  Rockingham  Memorial.'  It  was  an  anti 
war  paper  of  some  note  in  its  time.  I  confess  I  am  pleased  to  find,  on 
looking  at  it  now,  for  I  do  not  think  I  have  read  it  in  all  the  twenty 
years  that  have  rolled  by  since  I  wrote  it,  that  it  is  of  a  tone  and  strain 
less  vulgar  than  such  things  are  prone  to  be. 

"  Before  this  period,  I  think  in  1808,  I  had  written  the  little  pamphlet, 
lately  rescued  from  oblivion,  called  '  Considerations  on  the  Embargo 

Laws.' " l 

1  Autobiography. 


1807.]  REMOVAL  TO  PORTSMOUTH.  81 


CHAPTEE   IY. 
1807-1813. 

REMOVAL    TO     PORTSMOUTH MARRIAGE THE    BUCKMINSTERS MR. 

JEREMIAH    MASON — BIRTH    OF    A   DAUGHTER — THE    EMBARGO — • 
P.   B.    K.    ORATION — WAR   OF    1812 — THE    ENGLISH    AND    FRENCH 

DECREES ROCKINGHAM   MEMORIAL ELECTION    TO     CONGRESS 

RESOLUTIONS    ON    THE    ALLEGED    REPEAL    OF   THE   FRENCH   DE 
CREES. 

ON  a  Sunday  morning  in  September,  1807,  the  sexton  of 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Buckminster's  church,  in  Portsmouth,  intro 
duced  a  stranger  into  the  minister's  pew,  according  to  the  cus 
tom  of  the  time.  The  eldest  daughter  of  the  family,  on  her 
return  from  church,  observed  that  u  there  had  been  a  remark 
able  person  in  the  pew  with  her,  that  he  riveted  her  attention, 
and  that  she  was  sure  he  had  a  most  marked  character  for  good 
or  for  evil."  The  stranger  was  Daniel  Webster,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five.  His  appearance  at  that  time  has  been  thus  de 
scribed,  by  another  lady  of  the  same  family,  from  whom  this 
anecdote  is  derived :  "  Slender,  and  apparently  of  delicate  or 
ganization,  his  large  eyes  and  massive  brow  seemed  very  pre 
dominant  above  the  other  features,  which  were  sharply  cut, 
refined,  and  delicate.  The  paleness  of  his  complexion  was 
heightened  by  hair  as  black  as  the  raven's  wing."  He  took 
lodgings  very  near  Dr.  Buckminster's  house,  and  in  a  short 
time,  says  the  same  lady,  "  there  was  no  longer  a  problem  con 
nected  with  him." 1 

1  Mrs.  E.  Buckminster  Lee. — (Correspondence,  i.,  p.  438.) 
7 


32  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Ce.  IV. 

He  soon  became  very  intimate  in  the  family  of  Dr.  Buck- 
minster,  who  was  the  father  of  the  young  usher  at  Exeter 
already  mentioned.  The  younger  Buckminster  was  now  a  dis 
tinguished  clergyman  in  Boston,  settled  over  the  society  wor 
shipping  at  the  church  in  Brattle  Street,  and  he  was  one 
of  the  founders  of  the  Boston  Anthology,  to  which  Mr.  "Web 
ster  had  been  a  contributor  during  his  residence  at  Boscawen. 
To  this  association  is  probably  to  be  traced  the  interest  that 
was  immediately  taken  in  Mr.  "Webster  by  the  Buckminster 
family.  Mrs.  Lee  says : 

"  We  soon  saw  enough  of  him  to  appreciate  in  some  degree,  young  as 
we  were,  his  extraordinary  genius,  and  the  noble  qualities  of  his  character. 
The  genial  and  exceedingly  rich  humor  that  he  so  often  exhibited  was,  per 
haps,  at  this  time  more  prized  by  us  than  any  other  of  the  diversified  talents 
we  admired  in  him.  He  soon  formed  a  circle  around  him,  of  which  he 
was  the  life  and  soul.  We  young  people  saw  him  only  rarely,  in  friendly 
visits.  I  well  remember  one  afternoon  that  he  came  in,  when  the  elders  ot 
the  family  were  absent.  He  sat  down  by  the  window,  and,  as  now  and 
then  an  inhabitant  of  the  small  town  passed  through  the  street,  his  fancy 
was  caught  by  their  appearance  and  his  imagination  excited,  and  he  im 
provised  the  most  humorous  imaginary  histories  about  them,  which  would 
have  furnished  a  rich  treasure  for  Dickens,  could  he  have  been  the  delight 
ed  listener,  instead  of  the  young  girl  for  whose  amusement  this  wealth  of 
invention  was  expended.  Hon.  Mr.  Mason,  of  Portsmouth,  who  delighted 
in  the  humor  so  often  displayed  by  Mr.  Webster,  used  to  say,  that  *  there 
was  never  such  an  actor  lost  to  the  stage  as  he  would  have  made  had  he 
chosen  to  turn  his  talents  in  that  direction.' 

"  My  father,  Dr.  Buckminster,  took  the  liveliest  interest  in  Mr.  Webster, 
and,  as  he  remarked  at  this  time  the  apparent  frailty  of  his  constitution, 
he  urged  upon  his  young  friend  his  sure  remedy  for  slight  indisposition. 
This  was  half  an  hour  of  wood-sawing  before  breakfast,  with  a  long  two- 
handed  saw,  himself  holding  the  end  opposite  to  that  of  his  young  friend. 
We  young  people  were  always  delighted  when  this  strong  medicine  was 
taken  before  breakfast,  for,  however  disagreeable  in  itself,  Mr.  "Webster 
appeared  at  our  breakfast,  afterward,  with  his  genial  humor  unimpaired." 

In  the  following  June  (1808),  Mr.  Webster  left  Portsmouth, 
on  a  visit,  as  his  friends  supposed,  to  his  native  town ;  and 
without  communicating  to  them  any  other  intention.  He  re 
turned,  bringing  with  him  a  wife. 

When  his  matrimonial  engagement  was  first  formed  does 
not  distinctly  appear,  although  there  is  a  hint  of  it  in  one  of 


1808.]  MARRIAGE.  83 

his  letters  written  in  the  previous  December :  "  I  have  been  a 
young  dog  long  enough,  and  now  think  of  joining  myself,  as 
soon  as  convenient,  to  that  happy  and  honorable  society  of 
which  you  are  one,  the  society  of  married  men.  Can  I  do  bet 
ter  ? "  1  The  lady  was  Grace  Fletcher,  daughter  of  the  Rev. 
Elijah  Fletcher,  of  Hopkinton.3  She  had  an  elder  sister,  who 
was  the  wife  of  Israel  W.  Kelly,  Esq.,  of  Salisbury,  at  that 
time  sheriff  of  the  county  of  Merrimack,  and  afterward  United 
States  marshal  for  the  district  of  New  Hampshire.  It  was 
while  Miss  Fletcher  was  on  a  visit  to  her  sister  that  Mr.  Web 
ster  first  met  her,  at  some  time  in  the  year  180T.  She  was 
at  the  period  of  her  marriage  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven.  They 
were  married  at  Salisbury,  June  24,  1808. 

"Writing  as  if  in  the  presence  of  the  remaining  few  who  knew 
this  lovely  woman,  the  wife  of  Mr.  "Webster's  early  days  and 
the  mother  of  his  children,  I  borrow,  of  course,  the  descriptions 
of  others.  To  me,  the  gentle  being  who  shared  his  early  for 
tunes,  and  after  a  union  of  twenty  years  was  called  away  from 
him,  is  not  even  a  memory  ;  and  it  is  only  as  her  qualities  were 
said  to  have  been  reproduced  in  her  daughter,  whom  I  knew, 
that  I  can  have  her  in  imagination.  But  there  is  no  need  for 
repetitions  of  what  I  have  heard.  Mrs.  "Webster's  character 
can  be  given  in  the  words  of  those  who  knew  her  during  her 
whole  married  life.  Of  these,  it  is  needful  to  quote  no  one 
but  her  own  and  her  husband's  early  friend,  Mrs.  Lee,  who, 
in  1856,  addressed  to  Mr.  Fletcher  "Webster  a  sketch  of  his 
mother,  which  is  printed  in  his  father's  correspondence  : 

"  Mrs.  Webster's  mind  was  naturally  of  a  high  order,  and  whatever  was 
the  degree  of  culture  she  received,  it  fitted  her  to  be  the  chosen  companion 
and  the  trusted  friend  of  her  gifted  husband. 

1  Letter  to  Mr.  Fuller,  Dec.  2,  1807.  half-brother  of  Mrs.  Grace  Webster.    He 

2  Mrs.  Webster's    mother,   Rebecca  was  one  of  the  trustees  under  Mr.  Web- 
Chamberlin,  married,  first,  the  Rev.  Eli-  ster's  will,  to  whom  the  estate  at  Marsh- 
jah  Fletcher,  of  Hopkinton.    Of  this  mar-  field  was  devised  by  Mr.  Webster  for  the 
riage  there  were   four  children — three  use  of  his  son  and  grandson.     He  first 
daughters  and  a  son;  Grace  being  the  met  Mr.  Webster  in  the  year  1807, at  his 
youngest.     Mrs.  Fletcher  again  married  mother's  house.      At   that  period  Mr. 
the  Rev.  Christopher  Paige,  of  Hopkin-  Paige's  long  connection  with  Mr.  Web- 
ton,  and  bore  to  him  three  sons  and  a  ster  began,  and  it  continued  of  the  most 
daughter.     James  W.  Paige,  Esq.,  who  intimate  and  affectionate  character  to 
became  an  eminent  merchant  in  Boston,  the  time  of  Mr.  Webster's  death.     Mr. 
where  he  lately  died,  was  the  third  son  Paige  died  at  his  house  in  Summer  Street, 
of  this  marriage,  and  was,  consequently,  in  Boston,  May  19,  1868. 


84  LIFE   OF  DAXIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IV. 

"  She  was  sincerely  and  deeply  religious,  and  to  this  divinely  operating 
principle  was  it  to  be  attributed  that  she  was  never  elated,  never  thrown  off 
the  balance  of  her  habitual  composure  by  the  singular  early  success  of  her 
husband,  and  the  applause  constantly  following  him.  I  remember  a 
remark  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Parker,  of  Portsmouth :  '  that  it  was  a  striking 
peculiarity  of  Mrs.  "Webster  that  she  was  always  equal  to  all  occasions ; 
that  she  appeared  with  the  same  quiet  dignity  and  composed  self-posses 
sion  in  the  drawing-room  in  Washington  as  in  her  own  quiet  parlor  ; '  it 
was  only  when  an  unexpected  burst  of  applause  followed  some  noble  effort 
of  her  husband,  that  the  quickened  pulse  sent  the  blood  to  her  heart,  and 
the  tear  started  to  her  eye.  Uniting  with  great  sweetness  of  disposition 
unaffected,  frank,  and  winning  manners,  you  will  readily  believe  that  no 
one  could  approach  your  mother  without  wishing  to  know  her ;  and  no 
one  could  know  her  well  without  loving  her. 

"  When  Mr.  Webster  had  brought  this  interesting  companion  to  Ports 
mouth,  the  circle  that  gathered  around  them  became  more  intimate,  and 
was  held  by  more  powerful  attractions.  There  certainly  was  never  a  more 
charming  room  than  the  low-roofed,  simple  parlor,  where,  relieved  from 
the  cares  of  business,  in  the  full  gayety  of  his  disposition,  he  gave  himself 
up  to  relaxation." 

It  is  perhaps  not  given  to  us  to  know  with  certainty,  or  to 
estimate  accurately,  the  happiest  period  of  any  man's  life,  even 
when  we  have  been  personally  familiar  with  the  whole  of  it. 
But  before  the  reader  enters  upon  the  days  when  Mr.  Webster 
was  first  drawn  into  the  political  arena,  he  may  wish  to  linger 
amid  the  tranquil  scenes  of  domestic  and  social  life  which  fol 
lowed  his  marriage,  and  filled  his  residence  at  Portsmouth  with 
a  more  than  ordinary  share  of  human  felicity.  All  accounts 
concur  in  representing  this  as  a  period  of  great  happiness  for 
him  and  his.  He  himself  speaks  of  those  Portsmouth  years, 
long  after  they  had  flown  and  he  had  tasted  the  sweets  of  fame 
and  public  honors,  as  "  very  happy  years ;  "  and  the  testimony 
of  two  of  his  most  intimate  friends,  who  saw  him  in  the  enjoy 
ments  of  this  portion  of  his  life — I  refer  to  Mr.  Ticknor  and 
Mrs.  Lee — is  like  his  own.  The  elements  which  made  up  that 
happiness  were  very  large.  His  health  was  now  firmly  estab 
lished.  His  professional  position  soon  became  every  thing  that 
the  condition  of  society  in  his  native  State  could  hold  out  to 
any  man.  He  had  gathered  about  him  ample  means  of  further 
intellectual  culture ;  he  was  surrounded  by  a  circle  of  intelli 
gent  and  admiring  friends;  his  great  powers  were  expanding 


1807.]  PORTSMOUTH  HAPPINESS.  85 

with  the  discipline  of  his  daily  avocations  ;  the  approbation  and 
affection  of  his  fellow-citizens  followed  him  without  check  ;  he 
had  known  no  affliction  greater  than  the  loss  of  his  father,1  and 
his  domestic  life  had  become  complete.  "Within  two  years 
after  his  marriage,  a  daughter  was  born,  who  received  her  moth 
er's  name.  She  was  a  child  of  uncommon  intelligence  and 
beauty,  constantly  in  request  among  the  friends  of  her  parents, 
and  long  remembered  among  them  as  are  the  early  developed 
and  the  early  lost.  As  yet,  that  sorrow  had  not  darkened  his 
house,  and  this  little  girl  was  among  its  attractions. 

In  Mr.  Ticknor's  Keminiscences  of  Mr.  Webster,  I  find  the 
following  passage  relating  to  this  period : 

"  Between  1809  and  1814, 1  was  frequently  in  Portsmouth,  visiting  my 
friend,  Mr.  N.  A.  Haven,  Jr.  I  always  saw  Mr.  Webster  on  these  occasions, 
dining  with  him  at  his  own  house  and  elsewhere,  and  meeting  him  often 
in  the  evening.  Sometimes  I  saw  him  at  his  office.  He  seemed  busy,  but 
was  always  ready  for  cheerful  conversation ;  and  loved  to  tell  humorous 
stories  of  his  college-life.  His  office  was  a  common,  ordinary-looking 
room,  with  less  furniture  and  more  books  than  common.  He  had  a  small 
inner  room,  opening  from  the  larger,  rather  an  unusual  thing.  When  I 
first  saw  him  there,  he  lived  in  a  small,  modest,  wooden  house,  which 
was  burned  in  the  great  fire  in  1813.  His  parlor  was  a  bright  and  cheer 
ful  room.  I  remember  how  proud  and  fond  he  seemed  of  little  Grace,  his 
first  child,  as  she  sat  by  the  fire  with  her  book ;  a  child  of  uncommon 
intelligence,  with  a  brilliant  red  and  white  complexion,  and  deep-set  eyes, 
and  hair  as  black  as  her  father's.  He  seemed  very  happy.  He  had 
grown  a  little  stouter  than  he  was  when  I  first  saw  him,  and  had  a  more 
commanding  air ;  but  he  was  always  animated,  and  sometimes  full  of  fun. 
After  the  fire  he  had  a  somewhat  better  house ;  that,  I  think,  was  behind 
Dr.  Buckininster's  Church.  Mrs.  Webster  was  pleasing  and  animated,  and 
her  manner  to  the  friends  of  her  husband,  and  to  us  young  men,  was  very 
kind  and  cordial."  a 

To  those  who  have  known  Mr.  Webster  only  in  public,  or 
who  remember  only  the  stately  manner  of  his  ordinary  inter 
course  with  men,  it  is  difficult  to  give  an  idea  of  the  genial 
affections  which  at  every  period  of  his  life  flowed  out  from  him 
in  the  domestic  circle,  and  still  more  difficult  to  paint  the 

1  His  Bister  Sarah,  who  was  nearer  years  after  he  removed  to  Portsmouth, 
his  own  age  than  any  other  member  of  This  loss,  therefore,  I  do  not  consider  as 
his  family,  and  to  whom  he  was  tenderly  falling  within  the  period  particularly  ad- 
attached,  died  in  a  little  more  than  four  verted  to  in  the  text  2  MSS. 


86  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IV. 

abounding  gayety  and  humor  and  fascination  of  his  early  days, 
the  eloquence  of  his  unrestrained  conversation,  and  the  influ 
ence  of  his  personal  presence.  Yet  it  is  upon  these  character 
istics,  more  than  upon  the  manifestations  of  his  great  public  or 
professional  talents,  that  the  reminiscences  of  his  early  friends 
have  always  dwelt.  I  can  scarcely  open  one  of  the  numerous 
communications  that  are  before  me  from  those  who  knew  him 
as  a  young  man,  that  does  not  speak  with  peculiar  zeal  of  his 
social  powers.  It  seems  as  if  they  felt  that  the  world  has  set 
its  seal  upon  all  that  was  great  in  his  genius  and  majestic  in 
his  deportment  and  character,  or  imposing  in  his  intellectual 
achievements  and  public  services,  yet  that  there  was  a  charm,  a 
grace,  a  perfume  in  his  social  existence,  which  they  fear  the 
world  has  not  known,  and  of  which  they  bear  their  testimony 
more  fondly  than  of  all  things  else  that  cluster  about  his 
name. 

In  Portsmouth,  Mr.  Webster  entered  at  once  into  a  profes 
sional  practice  that  brought  him  in  contact  with  the  first  law 
yers  of  that  bar.  He  was  soon  engaged  as  leading  counsel  on 
one  or  the  other  side  of  nearly  every  important  cause  in  several 
of  the  counties  of  New  Hampshire  ;  he  and  a  few  others  of  the 
principal  members  of  the  Portsmouth  bar  following  the  Supe 
rior  Court  on  its  circuit  through  the  State.  Among  these  was 
that  extraordinary  man,  of  whom  little  is  now  known,  beyond 
the  borders  of  New  England,  by  the  active  generations  of 
American  lawyers ;  but  to  whose  acute  and  powerful  mind, 
through  the  discipline  of  opposing  conflicts  at  the  bar  and  the 
associations  of  an  intimate  friendship,  Mr.  Webster  has  impres 
sively  recorded  Ms  own  obligations,  as  he  always  acknowledged 
them  in  private  conversation.  This  was  Mr.  Jeremiah  Mason, 
who  was  by  fourteen  years  Mr.  Webster's  senior,  and  who  was 
the  admitted  head  of  the  legal  profession  in  New  Hampshire, 
when  Mr.  Webster  went  to  Portsmouth,  as  he  was  also  one  of 
the  greatest  lawyers  that  New  England  has  ever  produced. 
Since  it  was  my  fortune  to  have  known  both  of  these  very  emi 
nent  persons,  to  have  heard  them  repeatedly  at  the  bar,  and  to 
have  conversed  with  each  of  them  respecting  the  other,  I  may, 
before  quoting  what  Mr.  Webster  has  written  concerning  Mr 
Mason,  express  my  sense  of  its  entire  justness. 


1808.]  MR.  JEREMIAH  MASON.  87 

In  stature,  Mr.  Mason,  in  the  prime  of  life,  stood  six  feet  and 
seven  inches.  His  frame  was  proportionately  massive ;  his 
movements  were  slow  and  deliberate ;  and,  as  if  from  the  incon 
venience  of  always  towering  above  the  majority  of  mankind, 
he  had  a  habit  of  stooping  a  good  deal.  This  peculiarity,  and 
an  absence  of  most  of  the  external  signs  of  great  mental  exer 
tion,  made  him  often  appear  like  a  man  who  did  not  choose  to 
put  forth  more  than  half  of  his  natural  strength  of  body  or  of 
mind.  His  countenance  was  almost  as  heavy  as  that  of  Dr. 
Johnson  ;  while  in  the  grasp  of  his  intellect,  in  his  sententious 
wisdom,  and  in  a  certain  contempt  for  every  thing  that  was 
not  absolutely  true  when  measured  by  the  severest  standards, 
he  was  not  unlike  that  celebrated  person.  His  head  did  not 
appear  to  be  large,  in  comparison  with  the  majestic  propor 
tions  of  his  body ;  and  the  forehead,  contrary  to  the  usual  rule 
in  men  of  great  intellect,  was  somewhat  retreating.  A  stranger, 
seeing  him  in  public,  seated  in  a  posture  which  denoted  an  ap 
parent  sluggishness  of  temperament,  might  have  taken  him  for 
a  dull  man,  if  the  constant  watchfulness  of  his  eyes  had  not 
revealed  the  unceasing  alertness  and  activity  of  his  mind.  As 
his  imposing  form  rose  slowly,  and  he  straightened  himself  by 
degrees  to  as  great  a  height  as  he  ever  permitted  himself  to  at 
tain,  all  doubt  as  to  what  he  was,  or  what  he  was  about  to  do, 
vanished  from  the  spectator's  thoughts,  when  the  first  words 
reached  his  ears.  He  had  no  rhetoric  whatever.  He  used  no 
gestures.  His  pronunciation  was  quaint,  sometimes  provin 
cial  ;  but  his  choice  of  language  was  unerring.  He  disdained 
every  ornament  but  the  ornament  of  perfect  clearness.  His 
discourse  was  the  embodiment  of  pure  reason,  the  expression  of 
an  irresistible  logic.  When  he  dealt  with  evidence,  he  made  it 
crush  the  intellect  of  his  hearer  into  conviction.  "When  he  dealt 
with  principles  of  law,  he  handled  them  with  such  a  simplicity, 
and  made  them  so  lucid,  and  fitted  them  so  exactly  to  his  case, 
that  one  could  scarcely  avoid  believing  that,  if  on  the  particular 
occasion  he  was  wrong,  the  law  itself  had  always  been  wrong. 

He  was,  indeed,  a  consummate  master  of  the  common  law. 
In  the  other  parts  of  jurisprudence,  he  was  not  what  would  be 
accounted  very  learned  ;  at  least,  there  were  many  men  of  his 
time  who  knew  more  of  what  the  books  contained,  in  several 


88  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IV. 

of  the  departments  of  legal  lore.  But  he  was  always  sufficiently 
furnished  to  do  justice  to  any  cause  that  he  undertook,  and  he 
brought  to  every  cause  in  which  he  saw  fit  to  engage  a  power 
of  reasoning  and  of  discrimination,  and  a  depth  of  insight,  that 
made  him  a  most  formidable  adversary.  He  once  accepted  a 
seat  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  where  he  served  from 
1813  to  1817,  and  where  his  great  abilities,  his  wise  counsels, 
and  elevated  character  gave  him  a  large  influence.  Being  a 
Federalist,  and  a  change  of  parties  having  taken  place  in  the 
State,  he  was  not  reflected.  He  returned  to  the  practice  of 
his  profession  in  New  Hampshire,  and  to  the  enjoyments  of  a 
private  station,  in  which  he  was  widery  known  as  the  most  emi 
nent  citizen  of  the  State.  In  1832,  at  the  age  of  sixty-four,  he 
removed  to  Boston,  where  he  commanded  a  large  practice  in 
the  courts  for  a  period  of  about  six  years.  At  the  end  of  that 
time,  having  accumulated  such  fortune  as  he  deemed  needful, 
he  retired  from  the  more  active  duties  of  his  profession,  and 
lived  to  the  age  of  eighty,  with  dignity  and  ease,  with  all  his 
faculties  unimpaired,  and  imparting  to  those  who  had  the  ad 
vantages  of  his  society  the  fruits  of  his  singular  wisdom  and 
sagacity,  which  touched  with  equal  power  every  public  ques 
tion  and  every  private  interest.  He  died  on  the  14th  of  Octo 
ber,  1848. 

Of  this  great  antagonist  of  his  early  professional  career 
and  of  this  friend  with  whom  he  never  had  a  moment's  personal 
difference,  Mr.  Webster  made  a  record  in  his  Autobiography, 
which  he  was  well  aware  would  remain  private  while  either  of 
them  lived,  but  which  he  intended  should  stand  as  his  deliber 
ate  judgment.  It  was  written  nearly  twenty  years  before  Mr. 
Mason's  death ;  but  it  is  well  known  that  Mr.  "Webster  never 
changed  the  estimate  which  he  then  so  carefully  placed  011 
record,  as  I  am  confident  that  he  never  could  have  had  subse 
quent  reason  for  changing  it : 1 

1  In  a  playful  letter,  written  by  Mr.  my  bones  yet,  and  don't  care  about 
Webster  to  Mr.  Mason,  in  1830,  from  any  more  till  that  wears  out."  —  The 
Washington,  he  says  :  "  I  have  been  profound  respect  of  these  great  men 
written  to,  to  go  to  New  Hampshire,  for  each  other  was  founded  in  their  in 
to  try  a  cause  against  you  next  August,  tellectual  equality.  Mr.  Mason  never 
...  If  it  were  an  easy  and  plain  case  suppressed  his  contempt  when  he  felt  it. 
on  our  side,  I  might  be  willing  to  go;  One  of  his  Portsmouth  neighbors  was 
but  I  have  some  of  your  pounding  in  accustomed  to  say,  that  he  had  often 


1807-16.]  MR.  JEREMIAH  MASON".  39 

"  I  lived  in  Portsmouth  nine  years,  wanting  one  month.  They  were 
very  happy  years.  Circumstances  favored  me  at  my  first  beginning  there. 
Owing  to  several  occurrences,  there  happened  to  be  an  unfilled  place 
among  leading  counsel  at  that  bar.  I  did  not  fill  it ;  but  I  succeeded  to 
it.  It  so  happened,  and  so  has  happened,  that,  with  the  exception  of 
instances  in  which  I  have  been  associated  with  the  Attorney-General  of 
the  United  States,  for  the  time  being,  I  have  hardly  ten  times  in  my  life 
acted  as  junior  counsel.  Once  or  twice  with  Mr.  Mason,  and  once  or 
twice  with  Mr.  Prescott,1  once  with  Mr.  Hopkinson,2  are  all  the  cases  which 
occur  to  me. 

"  Indeed,  for  the  nine  years  I  lived  in  Portsmouth,  Mr.  Mason  and  my 
self,  in  the  counties  where  we  both  practised,  were  on  opposite  sides,  pretty 
much  as  a  matter  of  course.  He  has  been  of  infinite  advantage  to  me,  not 
only  by  his  unvarying  friendship,  but  by  the  many  good  lessons  he  has 
taught,  and  the  example  he  set  me  in  the  commencement  of  my  career. 
If  there  be  in  the  country  a  stronger  intellect,  if  there  be  a  mind  of  more 
native  resources,  if  there  be  a  vision  that  sees  quicker,  or  sees  deeper  into 
whatever  is  intricate,  or  whatsoever  is  profound,  I  must  confess  I  have  not 
known  it.  I  have  not  written  this  paragraph  without  considering  what  it 
implies.  I  look  to  that  individual,  who,  if  it  belong  to  anybody,  is  en 
titled  to  be  an  exception.  But  I  deliberately  let  the  judgment  stand. 
That  that  individual  has  much  more  habit  of  regular  composition,  that  he 
has  been  disciplined  and  exercised  in  a  vastly  superior  school,  that  he  pos 
sesses  even  a  faculty  of  illustration  more  various  and  more  easy,  I  think 
may  be  admitted.  That  the  original  reach  of  his  mind  is  greater,  that  its 
grasp  is  stronger,  that  its  logic  is  closer,  I  do  not  allow." 

The  person  with  whom  Mr.  Webster  here  intended  to  com 
pare  Mr.  Mason  was  Chief-Justice  Marshall.  When  this  is 
known,  and  it  is  recollected  that,  from  the  age  of  twenty-five, 
for  a  period  of  nine  years,  Mr.  Webster  was  in  almost  daily  con 
flict  with  the  professional  adversary  whom  he  thus  described, 
it  is  not  difficult  for  us  to  appreciate  the  nature  of  the  training. 
Mr.  Mason  compelled,  in  those  who  had  to  meet  him,  the  ut 
most  diligence  of  preparation,  and  the  utmost  vigilance  in  the 
trial  of  their  causes.  To  be  lacking  in  any  thing  that  study  of 
the  case  could  have  insured,  or  to  relax  the  attention,  where  he 
was  the  opponent,  was  certain  defeat.  Mr.  Mason,  too,  was  in 

heard  him^  speak  of  persons  of  very  high  This   refers   to   the   Dartmouth  College 

consideration  in  the  country  as  "  little  case,  in  which  Mr.  Webster,  in  one  sense, 

,"  and  "  little ; "  but  that  he  acted  as  "  junior,"  that  is,  he  opened 

never  heard  him  say  "  little  Webster."  the  cause,  and  Mr.  Hopkinson  closed  it. 

1  The  Hon.  William  Prescott,  father  But  the  opening  argument,  as  not  infre- 
of  the  historian.  quently  happens,  was  the  decisive  one. 

2  Joseph  Hopkinson,  of  Philadelphia.  This  occurred  in  1818. 


90  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IV. 

himself  a  study  for  a  young  man  educated  as  Mr.  Webster  had 
been ;  for,  although  there  was  much  in  his  manner  that  might 
be  observed  and  avoided,  there  was  also  that  which  could  be 
noted  to  advantage.  I  well  recollect  a  description  Mr.  "Web 
ster  once  gave  me,  of  a  change  which  he  said  he  deliberately 
made  in  his  own  style  of  speaking  and  writing.  He  observed 
that,  before  he  went  to  Portsmouth,  his  style  was  florid — he 
even  used  the  word  "  vicious  " — and  that  he  was  apt  to  make 
longer  sentences  and  to  use  larger  words  than  were  needful. 
He  soon  began,  however,  to  notice  that  Mr.  Mason  was,  as  he 
expressed  it,  "  a  cause-getting  man."  "  He  had  a  habit,"  said 
Mr.  Webster,  "  of  standing  quite  near  to  the  jury,  so  near  that 
he  might  have  laid  his  finger  on  the  foreman's  nose ;  and  then 
he  talked  to  them  in  a  plain  conversational  way,  in  short  sen 
tences,  and  using  no  word  that  was  not  level  to  the  comprehen 
sion  of  the  least  educated  man  on  the  panel.  This  led  me 
to  examine  my  own  style,  and  I  set  about  reforming  it  alto 
gether." 

As  we  are  now  arrived  at  the  period  when  Mr.  Webster 
began  to  take  a  more  active  interest  in  political  questions  than 
he  had  previously  exhibited,  it  will  be  necessary  to  describe 
briefly  the  condition  of  public  affairs,  the  situation  of  the  peo 
ple  who  subsequently  proffered  him  a  seat  in  Congress,  and 
their  and  his  relation  to  the  public  questions  of  the  time. 

During  the  European  wars  which  followed  the  French 
Revolution,  Washington  had  with  difficulty  preserved  this 
country  in  an  attitude  of  neutrality,  and  in  that  attitude  had 
handed  it  over  to  his  successor  in  the  presidency,  the  elder 
Adams.  Through  the  administration  of  the  latter,  commencing 
in  1797  and  ending  in  1801,  the  two  political  parties,  known  in 
our  subsequent  history  as  the  Federalists  and  the  Democrats, 
had  become  perfectly  well  defined ; l  and  the  triumph  of  the 
latter,  in  the  election  of  Mr.  Jefferson,  established  them  as  the 

1  In  the  political  nomenclature  of  that  tendencies  of  some  of  the  leading  Fed- 
period,  the  party  which  elected  Mr.  Jef-  eralists.  But  the  term  "  Democrats  " 
ferson  President  of  the  United  States  was  that  by  which  this  party  were  usu- 
were  at  first  called  "  Republicans,"  and  ally  distinguished  at  the  time  of  Mr.  Web- 
Mr.  Jefferson  himself  always  adhered  ster's  entrance  into  public  life,  and  this 
to  this  designation.  It  was  originally  term  will  accordingly  be  used  in  the 
adopted  for  the  purpose  of  expressing  present  work, 
opposition  to  the  supposed  monarchical 


1807.]  ENGLISH  AND  FRENCH  DECREES.  91 

governing  party  of  the  country  for  the  long  period  of  sixteen 
years.  Mr.  Jefferson's  administration,  beginning  in  1801  and 
ending  in  1809,  commenced  about  two  years  before  the  gigantic 
war  which  England  waged  against  Bonaparte  from  1803  to 
1815,  and  which  extended  to  the  middle  of  Mr.  Madison's 
second  presidency ;  Mr.  Madison  having  succeeded  Mr.  Jeffer 
son  in  1809,  and  going  out  of  office  in  1817.  Mr.  Jefferson, 
therefore,  was  President  of  the  United  States  when  Mr.  "Web 
ster,  in  1807,  became  a  citizen  of  a  town  on  the  coast  of  New 
England,  the  people  of  which  were  largely  engaged  in  mari 
time  commerce,  and  warmly  sympathized  in  the  political  opin 
ions  then  in  vogue  in  most  of  the  commercial  towns  of  that 
region.  These  opinions  were  chiefly  those  of  the  Federalists. 
The  bearing,  upon  the  interests  of  these  communities,  of  the 
events  which  were  then  taking  place  in  Europe  and  which 
strongly  affected  the  relations  of  this  country  with  the  two 
great  antagonist  powers  then  struggling  for  an  exclusive  con 
trol  of  the  ocean,  makes  it  needful  to  recall  the  precise  attitude 
in  which  their  measures  had  placed  our  commerce,  at  the 
moment  when,  in  1807,  it  was  arrested  by  the  Embargo. 

On  the  16th  of  May,  1806,  the  British  Government — in 
retaliation  for  the  previous  occupation  of  Hanover  by  the 
troops  of  Prussia,  a  country  then  under  the  control  of  Bona 
parte,  and  in  consequence  of  the  exclusion  of  British  ships  from 
Prussian  ports — by  an  Order  in  Council,  declared  the  coasts  of 
Prussia  in  a  state  of  blockade,  and  also  declared  another  block 
ade  of  the  coasts  of  the  Channel  from  Ostend  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Seine.  Napoleon's  counter-Decree,  issued  from  Berlin, 
November  21, 1806,  placed  the  British  Islands  in  a  state  of 
blockade,  prohibited  all  commerce  and  communication  with 
them,  and  declared  that  no  vessel  coming  directly  from  Eng 
land  or  any  of  her  colonies,  or  touching  there  after  the  publica 
tion  of  the  decree,  should  be  received  into  any  French  harbor. 
This  was  followed,  on  the  part  of  England,  by  another  Order  in 
Council,  issued  January  7,  1807,  excluding  all  neutral  vessels 
from  trade  with  any  port  belonging  to  France  or  her  allies, 
from  which  British  vessels  were  excluded. 

Then  came  another  Order  in  Council,  dated  November  11, 
1807,  which  declared  all  ports  and  places  of  France  and  her 


92  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IV. 

allies,  from  which,  the  British  flag  was  excluded,  as  subject  to 
the  same  restrictions,  in  respect  of  trade  and  navigation,  as  if 
actually  blockaded  in  the  most  strict  and  vigorous  manner,  and 
prohibited  all  trade  in  articles  the  produce  or  manufacture  of 
such  countries  or  colonies.  Finally,  this  series  of  violent  mani 
festoes  was  made  complete,  by  the  famous  Milan  Decree,  issued 
by  Bonaparte,  December  17,  1807,  by  which  every  vessel,  of 
whatever  nation,  that  should  have  submitted  to  be  searched  by 
British  cruisers,  was  declared  to  have  lost  the  neutral  char 
acter  ;  every  neutral  vessel  sailing  between  British  ports,  with 
any  species  of  cargo,  was  declared  to  be  good  prize  ;  and  these 
rigorous  measures  were  to  be  continued  toward  every  neutral 
nation,  until  it  had  caused  England  to  respect  the  rights  of 
its  flag. 

These  stupendous  assumptions  of  a  power  which  the  public 
law  gave  to  neither  of  the  belligerents,  operated  more  inju 
riously  upon  the  commerce  of  the  United  States  than  upon 
that  of  any  other  country  in  the  world.  In  fact,  we  were  then 
almost  the  only  carrying  nation  that  was  not  directly  or  indi 
rectly  a  party  to  the  war ;  and  we  had,  in  consequence^  ever 
since  it  began,  possessed  a  large  part  of  the  carrying  trade  of 
the  globe.  "We  were  thus  reduced  to  the  dilemma  of  being 
driven  from  the  seas,  or  of  compelling  one  or  both  of  the  belli 
gerents  to  recede  from  their  unwarrantable  positions.  Which 
of  them  was  originally  or  was  most  in  the  wrong ;  against 
which  it  was  our  policy  to  fight,  or  to  which  it  was  expedient 
to  lean  ;  and  what  were  the  measures,  short  of  actual  war,  that 
ought  to  be  adopted  by  us,  were  the  questions  on  which  our 
political  parties  differed  from  the  moment  when  our  commerce 
began  to  feel  the  effects  of  a  contest  that  involved  every  part 
of  the  European  world  and  nearly  every  colonial  dependency 
of  a  European  power.  Many  of  the  commercial  classes  in  this 
country  naturally  felt  that  the  aggressions  of  France  and  the 
ambition  of  Bonaparte  had  originally  created  this  enormous 
disturbance  in  the  relations  of  nations ;  and  they  as  naturally 
believed  that  affairs  were  not  to  be  improved  by  our  siding 
with  France  against  England.  In  the  Eastern  States,  the  com 
mercial  towns  were  generally  the  political  strongholds  of  the 
Federalists ;  and  the  Federalists  had  been,  from  the  first,  dis- 


1807.]  TENDENCIES   TO  WAR  WITH  ENGLAND.  93 

trustful  of  a  French  alliance,  opposed  to  the  schemes  of  Bona 
parte,  and  desirous  to  have  our  difficulties  with  England  accom 
modated,  upon  principles  that  would  at  once  save  our  national 
rights  and  prevent  us  from  becoming  absorbed  into  the  vortex 
of  European  politics  and  wars. 

But  the  Federalists  were  in  a  political  minority  in  the 
country.  The  nation  at  large,  whether  from  the  effect  of  its 
old  contest  with  England,  or  from  the  sympathies  awakened  by 
the  early  experiment  of  the  French  to  possess  and  live  under 
republican  institutions,  did  not  decidedly  recoil  from  the  abso 
lute  and  despotic  power  which  the  empire  subsequently  estab 
lished  both  over  France  and  over  a  large  part  of  Europe  ;  and 
perhaps  nothing  was  ever  more  skilfully  done,  than  when  the 
founder  of  that  empire,  in  launching  his  final  bolt  against 
England,  warned  the  people  of  this  country  that,  if  they  desired 
to  see  the  day  when  their  rights  as  neutrals  would  be  again 
respected,  they  must  extort  their  admission  from  England,  but 
that  from  him,  until  they  had  done  this,  they  had  nothing  to 
expect. 

Some  occurrences  between  this  country  and  England,  which 
had  happened  or  were  happening  when  the  full  consequences 
of  these  measures  began  to  be  felt  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
largely  contributed  to  the  effect  which  Bonaparte  expected  to 
produce.  In  June,  1807,  the  causeless  attack  on  the  Chesa 
peake  by  the  Leopard,  off  the  capes  of  Yirginia,  had  filled  the 
whole  country  with  indignation  against  the  English,  at  a  mo 
ment  when  our  people  were  most  excited  by  the  pretension  of 
a  right  to  search  our  vessels  for  British  seamen  and  deserters. 
Mr.  Jefferson  at  once  sent  orders  to  the  American  ministers  in 
England  to  demand  reparation  for  the  outrage  on  the  Chesa 
peake;  and  on  the  2d  of  July  he  issued  his  proclamation 
excluding  British  vessels-of-war  from  the  waters  of  the  United 
States.  He  summoned  Congress,  in  an  extraordinary  session, 
to  meet  on  the  26th  of  October.  In  the  mean  time,  both 
Napoleon's  Berlin  Decree  of  November  21,  1806,  and  the  Eng 
lish  Order  in  Council  of  January  Y,  1807,  were  in  operation ; 
but  when  Mr.  Jefferson  sent  his  message  to  Congress,  at  the 
opening  of  the  special  session,  in  consequence  of  the  more 
direct  and  immediate  aggressions  of  the  English  upon  our  com- 


94  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IV. 

mercial  rights  and  the  recent  affair  of  the  Chesapeake,  he 
directed  the  attention  of  that  body  almost  exclusively  to  the 
complaints  which  we  had  to  make  against  Great  Britain  ;  and, 
taking  severe  notice  of  her  late  interdiction  of  all  trade  by  neu 
trals  between  ports  not  in  amity  with  her,  he  mentioned  the 
French  Decree  of  November  21,  1806,  incidentally  only,  as  a 
document  that  had  already  been  laid  before  Congress.  The 
consequence  was,  that  our  grievances  against  England,  and  the 
measures  proper  to  be  adopted  in  relation  to  them,  formed  the 
chief  topic  of  popular  excitement,  at  the  time  when  intelligence 
of  the  still  more  stringent  Order  in  Council  of  November  11, 
1807,  was  received  at  Washington,  and  when  the  President, 
by  his  message  of  December  18,  180T,  recommended  the  Em 
bargo.  This  recommendation,  which  was  made  one  day  be 
fore  the  date  of  Napoleon's  Milan  Decree,  together  with  the 
pending  controversies  with  England,  gave  to  the  Embargo  the 
appearance  of  a  measure  directed  against  the  latter  power; 
when,  in  truth,  it  was  claimed  by  the  Administration  to  be 
necessary  to  prevent  the  departure  of  our  vessels  from  our  own 
ports,  in  order  to  save  our  commerce  from  exposure  to  the 
depredations  of  both  the  belligerents.  The  bill,  laying  an 
indefinite  embargo  on  all  vessels  in  the  ports  of  the  United 
States,  was  promptly  carried  through  Congress,  and  became  a 
law  on  the  22d  of  December,  1807. 

No  measure  of  the  Federal  Government,  since  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution,  had  ever  appeared,  to  most  of  those  on 
whose  interests  it  directly  operated,  so  sudden,  so  unnecessary, 
and  so  oppressive,  as  the  Embargo.  It  fell  upon  the  Eastern 
States  with  a  terrific  weight.  Six  towns  in  New  England  pos 
sessed  niore  than  a  third  of  the  tonnage  of  the  whole  Union. 
At  one  blow,  this  great  mass  of  shipping  was  rendered  almost 
valueless.  The  numerous  classes,  who  were  dependent  on  its 
active  employment  for  their  livelihood,  were  suddenly  deprived 
of  their  long-accustomed  means  of  earning  their  daily  bread. 
"When  we  consider  the  conflicting  opinions  that  had  prevailed 
for  years  concerning  the  policy  that  ought  to  be  pursued  by  our 
Government  toward  the  respective  belligerents ;  when  we  re 
member  that,  on  the  laying  of  the  Embargo,  one  portion  of 
the  people  felt  called  upon  to  justify  a  measure  that  inflicted 


1808.]  THE  EMBARGO.  95 

unparalleled  suffering  upon  another  portion ;  when  we  recall 
the  new,  and  then  singular  question,  whether  a  constitutional 
power  to  regulate  commerce  embraces  a  power  to  indefinitely 
inhibit  it — in  short,  when  we  endeavor  to  estimate  all  the 
elements  of  agitation  and  excitement  that  then  pervaded  our 
politics,  we  shall  have  no  cause  for  being  surprised  at  the  angry 
crimination  of  parties,  as  we  can  have,  in  truth,  no  reason  for 
assuming  that  all  the  right,  or  all  the  wrong,  was  on  either 
side.  It  is  easy  to  arraign  the  Federalist  or  the  Democrat  of 
that  period,  if  we  choose  to  identify  ourselves  with  his  opponent. 
But  we  shall  find,  if  we  survey  such  periods  with  impartiality, 
that,  even  in  times  of  difficulty  and  danger,  the  call  of  patriot 
ism  will  not  always  make  men  endure  patiently  the  destruction 
of  all  their  pecuniary  interests,  when  they  firmly  believe  that 
other  measures  might  have  been  adopted  to  avert  the  injury ; 
and  that,  when  other  men  have  fixed  opinions  that  the  measures 
of  Government  are  necessary  and  right,  they  will  inevitably 
erect  a  very  high  and  exacting  standard  of  patriotism,  by  which 
they  will  require  the  sufferers  to  restrain  their  opposition  to 
measures  which  they  themselves  uphold.  In  such  a  state  of 
things,  there  will  be  excesses  on  both  sides.  It  is  the  part  of  a 
wise  posterity,  in  looking  back  to  the  political  contests  of  a  for 
mer  generation,  not  to  disregard  the  possibility  of  error  that  be 
longs  to  human  nature,  whatever  may  have  been  the  badges  that 
it  wore,  or  the  political  classification  under  which  it  was  known. 
It  has  already  been  said  that  Mr.  Webster's  public  charac 
ter  should  not  be  considered  as  beginning  at  least  before  the 
year  1808,  when  he  published  a  small  pamphlet  on  the  Em 
bargo.  This  production  appeared  at  a  period  when  the  restric 
tions  imposed  by  Congress  upon  the  commerce  of  the  country 
were  without  limitation  in  point  of  time,  and  when  it  was  suf 
fering  from  a  paralysis,  for  which  no  prospect  of  relief  could 
be  discerned  in  the  apparent  policy  of  the  Administration.  The 
topics  discussed  by  Mr.  "Webster  related  to  the  distinction,  in 
point  of  constitutional  power,  between  an  unlimited  and  a 
limited  Embargo  ;  the  real  and  the  ostensible  causes  of  the 
present  one,  and  the  ruinous  effects  which  it  had  produced.1 

1  I  do  not  discover  why  Mr.  Webster    But  it  may  be  conjectured  that,  as  many 
did  not  put  his  name  to  this  pamphlet,     of  the  Republican  or  Democratic  party, 


96  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IV. 

For  some  time  after  the  publication  of  this  pamphlet,  Mr. 
Webster  does  not  seem  to  have  taken  any  active  part  in  politi 
cal  discussions,  nor  did  he  appear  before  the  public  in  any 
capacity  until  1812,  excepting  as  an  orator  of  the  P.  B.  K. 
Society  of  Dartmouth,  in  the  summer  of  1809 — a  purely  liter 
ary  occasion.  I  take  from  Mr.  Ticknor's  Reminiscences  the 
following  brief  notice  of  this  performance : 

"  In  1809  I  was  at  Hanover,  when  Mr.  Webster  went  there  to  deliver 
his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration.  Mrs.  Webster,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Jeremiah 
Mason,  and  several  other  friends,  were  with  him.  They  made  a  very  merry 
party.  Some  of  them  stayed  at  the  Olcotts',  and  others  at  Dr.  Smith's. 
They  were  objects  of  great  interest  in  the  village  through  the  whole  time 
they  remained  there.  Mr.  Webster's  manner  in  speaking  was  very  fine — 
fresh,  earnest,  and  impressive  (I  was  then  eighteen  years  old)  ;  his  oration 
was  very  much  admired  and  praised  ;  but  it  seemed  to  me,  at  the  time, 
that  the  excitement  he  created  and  the  homage  he  received  were  due 
rather  to  their  affection  for  the  man,  and  their  great  admiration  of  him, 
than  to  the  merit  of  that  particular  performance." 

The  original  manuscript  of  this  discourse  now  lies  before 
me,  just  as  it  was  written  on  the  journey  from  Portsmouth  to 
Hanover ;  for,  in  truth,  Mr.  Webster  had  accepted  the  engage 
ment  in  the  midst  of  a  very  busy  professional  practice,  and, 
when  he  left  Portsmouth,  he  had  scarcely  put  pen  to  paper. 
The  oration  was  written  at  the  inns  on  the  journey,  although 
composed,  doubtless,  as  was  his  frequent  custom,  during  the 
drive  of  each  day.  It  bears  the  marks  of  this  haste,  and,  apart 
from  the  manner  in  which  it  was  delivered,  it  was  certainly, 
on  the  whole,  as  Mr.  Ticknor  intimates,  not  a  very  remark 
able  performance.  But  it  contained  touches  of  the  power 
which  afterward  became  so  characteristic,  and  which  has  pre 
served  so  many  of  his  written  discourses  after  all  the  adventi 
tious  accompaniments  of  the  occasion  and  the  delivery  have 

in  New  England  as  well  as  elsewhere,  friendly  or  unfriendly  motives  I  do  not 
had  already  begun  to  waver  in  their  know,  or  in  what  way  it  had  been  "  res- 
political  faith  in  the  propriety  of  this  cued."  The  only  copy  of  it  that  I  have 
measure,  it  may  have  been  thought  ex-  seen  is  in  the  Library  of  the  Massachu- 
pedient  to  furnish  them  with  arguments  setts  Historical  Society,  which  is  one  of 
without  indicating  that  they  came  from  the  original  impression.  The  opinions 
a  Federal  source.  In  his  Autobiography,  expressed  in  it,  concerning  the  uncon- 
he  speaks  of  it  as  "  the  little  pamphlet  stitutional  character  of  an  embargo,  not 
lately  rescued  from  oblivion."  Whether  limited  in  duration,  Mr.  Webster  never 
it  was  then  (1830)  brought  forward  with  changed. 


1809.]  ORATION  AT  DARTMOUTH.  97 

been  long  separated  from  their  text.  The  subject  which  he 
selected  was  the  "  State  of  our  Literature."  After  adverting 
to  the  fact  that  neither  our  own  country  nor  the  age  was  dis 
tinguished  by  uncommon  literary  zeal,  he  entered  upon  a  dis 
cussion  of  the  causes  which  then  impeded  the  cultivation  of 
letters  and  science  in  America.  The  following  passage,  in 
which  he  answered  what  was  then  a  domestic  apology  for  the 
prevailing  "  apathy  in  the  pursuit  of  literary  and  scientific 
objects,"  may  be  quoted  ;  for  it  reminds  us  of  the  great 
thoughts  that  were  afterward  so  imposingly  developed  in  his 
Plymouth  discourse : 

"It  has  indeed  been  said  that  America  is  yet  too  young  to  imbibe  an 
ardor  for  letters ;  that  she  can  hardly  expect  even  works  of  mediocrity, 
for  years  yet  to  come ;  that  seven  centuries  from  the  foundation  of  Kome 
were  scarcely  sufficient  to  produce  Horace  and  Virgil,  Hortensius  and 
Cicero  ;  that  when  as  many  years  have  rolled  by,  from  the  landing  of  our 
fathers,  as  from  Romulus  to  Augustus,  we  may  then  expect  great  poets, 
orators,  and  historians.  No  reasons  from  analogy  can  apply  among 
nations  so  entirely  dissimilar.  Rome  set  out  in  the  career  of  national  ex 
istence  completely  barbarous.  She  got  up  out  of  her  cradle  an  infant 
savage,  with  all  the  wolf  in  her  blood.  She  was  profoundly  ignorant  of 
first  elements.  She  began  at  her  alphabet.  America,  on  the  contrary, 
commenced  her  existence  at  a  time  when  the  sources  of  knowledge  were 
unfolded,  and  the  human  mind  was  bounding  forward  in  the  path  of  im 
provement.  Her  first  colonists  were  scholars.  Raleigh,  Smith,  Penn, 
Robinson,  are  not  names  found  in  the  first  page  of  Roman  history.  No 
nation  can  trace  so  certain  and  so  honorable  an  ancestry  as  America.  It 
runs  not  back  to  clans  of  ravishers  and  robbers,  nor  to  the  lair  of  the 
foster-mother  of  Romulus.  Nor  is  it  enveloped  in  feudal  ignorance  or 
Druidical  mystery.  It  is  the  plantation  of  enlightened  men,  from  the  best- 
informed  nations  of  Europe,  in  a  new  country,  who  were  anxious  to  strew 
the  seeds  of  knowledge  at  the  birth  and  beginning  of  their  republic." 

This  extract  is  sufficient  to  enable  the  reader  to  mark  the 
period  when  Mr.  "Webster  had  acquired  the  style  for  which  he 
was  distinguished  through  life.  The  short,  pregnant  sentences, 
the  choice  and  expressive  words,  the  rejection  of  superfluous 
phrases,  are  here  as  conspicuous  as  they  are  in  any  thing  that 
he  ever  wrote.1 


1  In  some  rough  notes  written  by  Mr.     hardly  put  pen  to  paper  when  I  left 


98  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IV. 

The  period  which,  intervened  between  1809  and  1812  was, 
as  I  have  already  said,  exclusively  devoted  by  Mr.  Webster  to 
the  practice  of  his  profession.  But  the  year  1812  brought  with 
it  a  great  change  in  the  situation  of  the  country,  and  a  com 
munity  like  that  of  Portsmouth  could  not  leave  such  a  man  as 
Mr.  "Webster  in  the  occupations  and  enjoyments  of  private  life. 
In  June  of  that  year,  on  the  recommendation  of  Mr.  Madison, 
then  President  of  the  United  States,  Congress  had  declared 
war  against  England — a  war  which  the  supporters  of  the 
Administration  had  long  regarded  as  inevitable  and  necessary, 
but  which  their  opponents  had  as  steadily  sought  to  avert. 
The  Embargo,  which  commenced  in  1807  under  Mr.  Jefferson, 
had  produced  no  effect  on  the  course  of  England  and  France 
toward  the  neutral  commerce  of  the  United  States.  It  was 
relaxed  in  1809,  in  respect  to  our  trade  with  other  countries ; 
but  against  England  and  France  a  system  of  the  strictest  non- 
intercourse  was  substituted  for  it,  by  an  act  passed  on  the  1st 
of  March,  1809,  which  was  to  continue  until  the  end  of  the 
next  session  of  Congress.  It  was  announced,  in  this  law,  that 
in  case  either  England  or  France  should  so  revoke  or  modify 
her  edicts  as  that  they  should  cease  to  violate  the  neutral  com 
merce  of  the  United  States,  the  President  was  authorized  to 
reopen  the  trade  with  the  nation  so  doing,  by  proclamation. 

The  position  thus  taken  involved  us  in  such  a  way  in  the 
dealings  of  the  two  belligerents  with  each  other,  in  respect  to 
their  injurious  edicts,  that  France  was  enabled  to  exercise  over 
our  course,  by  her  menaces,  her  flattery,  and  her  duplicity,  a 
far  greater  influence  than  should  ever  have  been  permitted  to 
her.  As  soon  as  Napoleon  heard  of  our  Non-intercourse  Act 
of  March  1,  1809,  he  immediately  seized  and  sequestered  all 
the  American  vessels  then  in  France,  with  their  cargoes,  by 
way,  as  he  said,  of  reprisal.  Congress  then  modified  the 
authority  given  to  the  President,  by  a  new  act  passed  on  the 
1st  of  May,  1810,  which  provided  that,  in  case  either  Great 
Britain  or  France  should,  before  the  3d  of  March,  1811,  so 

which  were  never  written  at  all.     I  have  find  any  distinct  allusion  to  the  press, 

turned   down  two    leaves   and    marked  but  I  presume  Mr.  Webster  referred  to  a 

short  passages.     I  find,  on  one  of  them,  passage  in  which  he  introduced  a  vigor- 

a  good  round  abuse  of  the  press,  which  ous  denunciation  of  the  corrupting  effect 

it  may  be  prudent  to  omit."    I  do  not  of  party  politics. 


1810.]  CONDUCT  OF  FRANCE.  99 

revoke  or  modify  her  edicts  as  that  they  would  cease  to  violate 
the  neutral  commerce  of  the  United  States,  the  President  might 
declare  the  fact  by  proclamation ;  and  that,  if  the  other  nation 
did  not  do  the  same  thing  within  three  months  thereafter,  the 
President  might  put  the  Non-intercourse  Act  in  force  against 
her.  A  copy  of  this  law  was  immediately  forwarded  to  the 
American  minister  in  Paris,  and  he  was  instructed  to  say  to 
the  French  Government  that  they  now  had  an  opportunity,  by 
repealing  their  edicts  as  to  the  United  States,  to  see  the  latter 
put  their  Non-intercourse  Act  in  force  against  England,  in  order 
to  compel  her  to  abandon  her  Orders  in  Council.  At  the  same 
time,  our  minister  was  directed  to  combine,  with  his  application 
for  a  repeal  of  the  French  Decrees,  a  demand  for  restitution  of 
the  American  property  that  had  been  sequestered  in  France. 

Napoleon  adroitly  seized  upon  this  overture.  On  the  5th  of 
August,  1810,  his  foreign  secretary  wrote  to  our  minister,  that 
as  Congress  had  now  retraced  their  steps,  and  had  opened 
the  trade  of  France  to  American  ports,  and  engaged  to  oppose 
whichever  of  the  belligerent  powers  that  should  refuse  to 
acknowledge  the  rights  of  neutrals,  he  was  authorized  to  de 
clare  the  Decrees  of  Berlin  and  Milan  revoked,  and  that  after  the 
1st  of  the  ensuing  November  they  would  cease  to  have  effect ; 
it  being  understood,  he  added,  that,  in  consequence  of  this 
declaration,  the  English  should  revoke  their  Orders  in  Council 
and  renounce  the  new  principles  of  blockade  which  they  had 
wished  to  establish,  or  that  the  United  States,  conformably  to 
their  Non-intercourse  Act,  should  cause  their  rights  to  be  re 
spected  by  the  English.  He  further  expressed  the  satisfaction 
of  the  Emperor  in  making  known  this  determination,  and  added 
that  His  Majesty  loved  the  Americans,  and  that  their  prosperity 
and  their  commerce  were  within  the  scope  of  his  policy.  But 
no  copy  of  any  repealing  decree  was  furnished  to  the  Ameri 
can  minister,  and  he  consequently  could  not  enable  his  col 
league  in  London  to  exhibit  to  the  British  Government  any 
thing  but  the  conditional  and  equivocal  French  note  of  August 
5,  1810.  As  late  as  the  Tth  of  September,  all  that  could  be 
further  drawn  from  the  French  secretary  was,  that  the  Berlin 
and  Milan  Decrees  would  not  be  applied  to  American  vessels, 
if  they  could  be  considered  as  American,  but  that  they  would 


100  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IV. 

be  treated  as  hostile  if  they  had  submitted  to  be  visited  by 
British  cruisers  under  the  Orders  in  Council. 

But  the  British  Government  did  not  consider  that  this  pro 
ceeding  could  be  made  the  ground  for  exacting  from  them  a 
repeal  of  their  Orders  in  Council,  in  compliance  with  a  promise 
which  they  had  previously  given  to  repeal  them,  when  satisfied 
of  the  revocation  of  the  French  Decrees.  They  construed  the 
French  declaration  in  one  of  the  ways  of  which  it  was  certainly 
susceptible,  namely,  as  a  conditional  revocation ;  the  condition 
being,  as  they  viewed  it,  that,  before  the  French  Decrees  should 
cease  to  operate,  Great  Britain  must  have  repealed  her  Orders 
in  Council,  and  also  must  have  renounced  those  principles  of 
blockade  which  the  French  alleged  to  be  new.  They  said  that 
the  United  States  could  not  be  warranted  in  putting  their 
Non-intercourse  Act  in  force  against  England,  and  not  against 
France,  under  such  a  condition  as  France  had  now  added  to  the 
American  claim. 

At  home,  the  President,  relying  on  the  French  declaration, 
on  the  2d  of  November,  1810,  issued  his  proclamation,  an 
nouncing  that  the  French  Decrees  had  been  so  revoked  as  to 
cease  to  violate  the  neutral  commerce  of  the  United  States,  and 
declaring  our  trade  open  with  France  and  her  dependencies. 
On  the  same  day  the  collectors  of  the  customs  throughout  the 
Union  were  instructed  to  put  the  Non-intercourse  Act  in  force, 
after  the  2d  of  the  ensuing  February,  against  British  vessels, 
and  all  the  productions  of  Great  Britain  and  her  dependencies, 
if  the  revocation  of  the  English  Orders  in  Council  had  not  in 
the  mean  time  been  announced.  When  informed  of  this  step, 
Napoleon  did  nothing  more  than  to  direct  his  prize  courts  to 
suspend  the  further  execution  of  the  Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees, 
in  the  cases  of  American  vessels,  until  the  2d  of  February,  but 
to  hold  the  American  prizes  in  a  state  of  sequestration  until 
that  day.  His  cruisers  were  not  directed  to  cease  making 
captures  of  American  property  sailing  in  contravention  of  his 
decrees.  The  Emperor  reserved  to  himself  to  determine,  on 
the  2d  of  February,  "  with  regard  to  the  definitive  measures  to 
be  taken  for  distinguishing  and  favoring  the  American  navi 
gation." 

While  these  things  were  taking  place  in  France  and  in 


1811.]  WAR  WITH  ENGLAND.  101 

America,  our  minister  in  London,  Mr.  Pinckney,  was  engaged 
in  claiming  from  the  English  ministry  a  repeal  of  their  Orders 
in  Council,  upon  the  ground  of  the  French  declaration  of  Au 
gust  5,  1810,  and  was  receiving  in  substance  the  answer 
which  has  already  been  recapitulated.  This  discussion  lasted 
from  the  middle  of  August,  1810,  until  the  last  of  February, 
1811,  when  Mr.  Pinckney,  convinced  that  nothing  could  be 
done,  asked  for  an  audience  of  leave  from  the  Prince  Regent, 
which  was  granted  on  the  1st  of  March,  and  he  prepared  to 
return  home.  But,  before  his  departure,  the  appointment  of 
Mr.  Foster  as  minister  plenipotentiary  to  the  United  States 
was  announced  to  him,  with  the  intimation,  however,  that  Mr. 
Foster,  while  instructed  to  adjust,  if  possible,  all  matters  of 
difference  with  the  United  States,  would  not  be  authorized  to 
relinquish  any  of  the  principles  on  which  the  British  Govern 
ment  held  it  to  be  impossible  for  them  to  repeal  their  Orders 
in  Council  under  the  conditions  which  they  understood  to 
have  been  dictated  by  France.  They  desired,  they  said,  to  re 
linquish  those  orders  whenever  it  could  be  done  without  involv 
ing  the  sacrifice  of  their  essential  maritime  rights  and  interests. 
Meanwhile,  in  the  absence  of  satisfactory  proof  that  the 
French  Decrees  had  been  repealed,  more  than  twenty-five 
American  vessels,  with  their  cargoes,  were  condemned  by  the 
English  Admiralty  Court,  in  May  and  June  of  that  year  (1811), 
for  violation  of  the  Orders  in  Council.  Other  occurrences 
tended  to  increase  the  popular  irritation  against  England  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  In  May,  a  conflict  took  place  be 
tween  our  frigate  the  President  and  the  British  cruiser  the 
Little  Belt.  This  affair  was  the  counterpart  of  that  of  the 
Chesapeake  and  the  Leopard  ;  but,  in  this  instance,  the  superi 
ority  of  force  was  on  our  side,  and  the  combat  grew  out  of  an 
attempt  by  our  frigate  to  ascertain  the  nationality  of  the  Little 
Belt.  When,  therefore,  Mr.  Foster  arrived  in  Washington,  in 
July,  1811,  he  had  to  deal  with  the  cases  of  the  Chesapeake 
and  the  Little  Belt,  the  grievances  arising  from  the  impress 
ment  of  seamen  out  of  our  vessels,  the  demand  of  our  Govern 
ment  for  a  repeal  of  the  Orders  in  Council,  and  other  topics  of 
serious  difference.  The  great  obstacles  to  any  adjustment,  how 
ever,  were  found  in  the  right  of  search  insisted  on  by  Great 


102  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTEE.  [Cn.  IV. 

Britain,  and  the  position  in  which  the  repeal  of  the  Orders  in 
Council  had  been  placed  by  what  had  already  occurred.  A 
long  negotiation,  extending  from  July,  1811,  to  June,  1812,  in 
which  the  divergence  still  turned  on  the  point  whether  the 
French  Decrees  had,  in  truth,  been  repealed — each  side  pre 
senting  what  it  regarded  as  proof  of  its  own  view  of  that  ques 
tion — resulted  in  nothing.1  The  act  of  Congress  which  de 
clared  war  against  England,  passed  on  the  18th  of  June,  1812, 
proceeded  upon  the  idea  that  a  state  of  actual  hostilities  had 
for  some  time  existed,  and  recognized  a  war  as  well  as  estab 
lished  one. 

These  explanations  will  be  sufficient  to  show  the  attitude 
of  the  question  relating  to  the  policy  or  the  propriety  of  the 
war,  as  it  was  viewed  among  us  by  those  who  supported  and 
those  who  opposed  it :  the  one  side  alleging  that  France,  how 
ever  oppressively  she  had  conducted  toward  us  in  the  past, 
had  at  length  removed  her  obnoxious  decrees  as  against  us, 
and  that  England  was  now  wholly  in  the  wrong ;  the  other 
side  affirming  that  France  had,  in  sheer  duplicity,  caused  us  to. 
make  war  on  England,  the  result  of  which,  besides  its  injuri 
ous  effects  on  all  our  other  interests,  would  be  an  unnatural 
alliance  between  our  Government  and  the  Emperor  Napoleon. 
It  was  in  this  state  of  the  public  feeling  that  Mr.  Webster 
entered  political  life.  His  first  appearance  as  a  public  speaker, 
after  the  commencement  of  the  war,  was  on  the  4th  of  July, 
1812,  when  he  was  invited  to  deliver  an  oration  before  the 
"  Washington  Benevolent  Society  "  of  Portsmouth. 

This  address  contained  a  firm  but  temperate  statement  of 
the  grounds  of  opposition  to  the  war.  But  it  also  contained 
more ;  for,  young  as  Mr.  Webster  was — he  was  but  just  turned 
of  thirty — he  had  already  mastered  the  great  purposes  for 
which  the  Federal  Government  had  been  established  under  the 
Constitution,  and  he  knew  how  to  deduce  from  those  purposes 
the  duties  which,  by  plain  implication,  they  impose  upon  any 
administration  that  undertakes  the  conduct  of  a  war  against 

1  Of  this  prolonged  and  dreary  cor-  the  reason  and  justice  of  their  cause  ; 

respondence,    the  Annual   Register  ob-  yet  both  were,  in  fact,  determined  by 

served,  with  great  truth  and  impartiality,  motives  of  state-policy  operating  exclu- 

that  "  both  parties  boasted  of  their  mod-  sively  upon  themselves." — (Annual  Regis- 

eration  and  forbearance  ;  both  alleged  ter  for  1812,  vol.  liv.,  p.  194.) 


1812.]  WANT  OF  A  NAVY.  103 

a  maritime  power.  "  Maritime  defence,  commercial  regulation, 
and  national  revenue,  were  laid,"  lie  said,  "  at  the  foundation 
of  the  national  compact.  They  are  its  leading  principles,  and 
the  causes  of  its  existence.  They  were  primary  considerations, 
not  only  with  the  convention  which  framed  the  Constitution, 
but  also  with  the  people  when  they  adopted  it.  They  were  the 
objects,  and  the  only  important  objects,  to  which  the  States 
were  confessedly  incompetent.  To  effect  these  by  the  means  of  a 
national  government  was  the  constant,  the  prevalent,  the  exhaust- 
less  topic  of  those  who  favored  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution." 
After  showing  that  the  interests  of  commerce  had  been 
intrusted  to  the  safe  keeping  of  the  General  Government,  not 
for  confinement  and  restriction,  but  for  encouragement,  protec 
tion,  and  manly  defence,  he  proceeded  to  notice  the  departure 
from  Washington's  political  system,  that  had  been  evinced  by 
the  neglect  into  which  the  navy  had  been  suffered  to  fall  during 
the  administration  of  Mr.  Jefferson. 

"  In  the  system  of  Washington  was  also  embraced  a  competent  pro 
vision  for  maritime  and  naval  defence.  He  saw  that  we  had  no  other 
grounds  to  look  for  safety  or  security  than  in  our  own  power  to  protect 
ourselves,  and  to  punish  wrong  wherever  it  was  offered.  A  navy,  suffi 
cient  for  the  defence  of  our  coasts  and  harbors,  for  the  convoy  of  impor 
tant  branches  of  our  trade,  and  sufficient  also  to  give  our  enemies  to 
understand,  when  they  injure  us,  that  they  also  are  vulnerable,  and  that 
we  have  the  power  of  retaliation  as  well  as  that  of  defence,  seems  to  be 
the  plain,  necessary,  indispensable  policy  of  the  nation.  It  is  the  dictate 
of  nature  and  common  sense,  that  means  of  defence  shall  have  relation  to 
the  nature  of  the  danger.  In  the  administration  of  Washington,  whose 
habit  it  was  rather  to  follow  the  course  of  Nature  than  to  seek  to  control 
it,  beginnings  were  made,  bearing  proportion  to  what  our  trade  then  was, 
and  looking  forward  to  what  it  would  be.  Even  at  that  time,  the  quan 
tity  of  our  navigation  justified  respectable  naval  preparations.  The  quan 
tity  of  shipping,  owned  by  the  single  neighboring  county  of  Essex,  as  early 
as  that  period,  would  bear  comparison  with  the  whole  navigation  of  Eng 
land  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  when  the  Armada  of  Spain  was  defeated  by 
the  English  navy. 

"If  the  plan  of  Washington  had  been  pursued,  and  our  navy  had  been 
suffered  to  grow,  as  it  naturally  would  have  done,  with  the  growth  of  our 
commerce  and  navigation,  what  a  blow  might  at  this  moment  be  struck, 
and  what  protection  yielded,  surrounded  as  our  commerce  now  is  with 
all  the  dangers  of  sudden  war !  Even  as  it  is,  all  our  immediate  hopes  of 
glory  or  conquest,  all  expectation  of  events  that  shall  gratify  the  pride  or 


104  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IV. 

spirit  of  the  nation,  rest  on  the  gallantry  of  that  little  remnant  of  a  navy 
that  has  now  gone  forth,  like  lightning,  at  the  beck  of  Government,  to 
scour  the  seas. 

"  It  will  not  be  a  bright  page  in  our  history,  which  relates  the  total 
abandonment  of  all  provision  for  naval  defence,  by  the  successors  of  Wash 
ington.  Not  to  speak  of  policy  and  expediency,  it  will  do  no  credit  to 
the  national  faith,  stipulated  and  plighted  as  it  was  to  that  object,  in 
every  way  that  could  make  the  engagement  solemn  and  obligatory.  So 
long  as  our  commerce  remains  unprotected,  and  our  coasts  and  harbors 
undefended  by  naval  and  maritime  means,  essential  objects  of  the  Union 
remain  unanswered,  and  the  just  expectation  of  those  who  assented  to  it, 
disappointed. 

"  A  part  of  our  navy  has  been  suffered  to  go  to  entire  decay.  Another 
part  has  been  passed,  like  an  article  of  useless  lumber,  under  the  hammer 
of  the  auctioneer.  As  if  the  millennium  had  already  commenced,  our  poli 
ticians  have  beaten  their  swords  into  ploughshares.  They  have  actually 
bargained  away  in  the  market  essential  means  of  national  defence,  and 
carried  the  product  to  the  Treasury.  Without  loss  by  accident  or  by 
enemies,  the  second  commercial  nation  in  the  world  is  reduced  to  the 
humiliation  of  being  unable  to  assert  the  sovereignty  of  its  own  seas,  or  to 
protect  its  navigation  in  sight  of  its  own  shores.  What  war  and  the 
waves  have  sometimes  done  for  others,  we  have  done  for  ourselves.  We 
have  taken  the  destruction  of  our  marine  out  of  the  power  of  fortune,  and 
nobly  achieved  it  by  our  own  counsels ! " 

Why  lie  began  thus  early  to  insist  on  measures  of  naval  de 
fence,  will  be  understood  by  those  who  remember  that  the  ten 
dency  was  at  first  to  make  this  a  war  on  the  land,  and  that  the 
project  of  invading  Canada  was  already  foreshadowed  at  the 
time  he  delivered  this  address.  Yet  at  this  moment  our  mer 
chant-vessels  were  scattered  over  every  sea,  and  it  has  been  re 
marked  by  one  of  our  own  writers,  who  was  entirely  conversant 
with  the  subject,  that  "  no  other  instance  can  be  found  of  so 
great  a  stake  in  shipping  with  a  protection  so  utterly  inade 
quate."  l 

This  discourse  is  also  important  in  another  respect,  for  Mr. 
"Webster  took  occasion  in  it  to  state  the  true  principles  which 
govern  that  question  in  political  ethics  which  relates  to  the  just 
boundaries  of  political  opposition  in  a  time  of  war.  These 
principles  he  enunciated  so  clearly,  that  all  can  see  in  them  the 

1  Cooper's  "  History  of  the  American  cruising  vessels  on  the  ocean,  nine  of 
Xavy."  He  states  that  at  the  commence-  them  being  of  a  class  less  than  frig- 
ment  of  the  war  we  had  only  seventeen  ates. 


1812.]  PRINCIPLES  OF  OPPOSITION.  105 

rules  by  which  his  own  conduct  as  a  public  man  was  regulated, 
from  the  beginning  of  his  career  until  its  close : 

"  With  respect  to  the  war  in  which  we  are  now  involved,  the  course 
which  our  principles  require  us  to  pursue  cannot  be  doubtful.  It  is  now 
the  law  of  the  land,  and  as  such  we  are  bound  to  regard  it.  Resistance 
and  insurrection  form  no  part  of  our  creed.  The  disciples  of  "Washing 
ton  are  neither  tyrants  in  power  nor  rebels  out.  If  we  are  taxed,  to  carry 
on  this  war,  we  shall  disregard  certain  distinguished  examples,  and  shall 
pay.  If  our  personal  services  are  required,  we  shall  yield  them  to  the  pre 
cise  extent  of  our  constitutional  liability.  At  the  same  time,  the  world 
may  be  assured  that  we  know  our  rights,  and  shall  exercise  them.  "We 
shall  express  our  opinions  on  this,  as  on  every  measure  of  Government — I 
trust,  without  passion ;  I  am  certain,  without  fear.  We  have  yet  to  learn 
that  the  extravagant  progress  of  pernicious  measures  abrogates  the  duty 
of  opposition,  or  that  the  interest  of  our  native  land  is  to  be  abandoned 
by  us  in  the  hour  of  her  thickest  dangers,  and  sorest  necessity.  By  the 
exercise  of  our  constitutional  right  of  suffrage,  by  the  peaceable  remedy 
of  election,  we  shall  seek  to  restore  wisdom  to  our  councils,  and  peace  to 
our  country. 

"  Standing  thus  pledged  by  our  principles  to  obey  the  laws,  and  to 
perform  the  whole  duty  of  faithful  citizens,  we  are  yet  at  liberty  to  declare 
fully  and  freely  the  grounds  on  which  we  lament  the  commencement  and 
shall  deplore  the  continuance  of  the  present  contest.  We  believe,  then, 
that  this  war  is  not  the  result  of  impartial  policy.  If  there  be  cause  of 
war  against  England,  there  is  still  more  abundant  cause  of  war  against 
France.  The  war  is  professedly  undertaken,  principally,  on  account  of 
the  continuance  of  the  British  Orders  in  Council.  It  is  well  known  that 
those  orders,  odious  as  they  are,  did  not  begin  the  unjust  and  vexatious 
system  practised  upon  neutrals,  nor  would  that  system  end  with  those 
orders,  if  we  should  obtain  the  object  of  the  war,  by  procuring  their 
repeal.  The  decrees  of  France  are  earlier  in  point  of  time,  more  extrava 
gant  in  their  pretensions,  and  tenfold  more  injurious  in  their  conse 
quences.  They  are  aggravated  by  a  pretended  abrogation,  and,  holding 
our  understandings  in  no  higher  estimation  than  our  rights,  that  nation 
requires  us  to  believe  in  the  repeal  of  edicts,  the  daily  operation  of  which 
is  manifest  and  visible  before  our  eyes." 

The  discourse  was  closed  with  a  vigorous  denunciation  and 
protest  against  a  French  alliance,  or  the  establishment  of  a  com 
mon  interest  between  our  free  republican  institutions  and  the 
absorbing  despotism  and  ambition  of  the  French  empire. 

Regarded  as  the  point  from  which  Mr.  Webster's  political 
career  began,  this  address  stands  in  a  very  important  relation 
to  his  history.  Whatever  differences  of  opinion  may  have  pre- 


106  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.JV. 

vailed  heretofore,  or  may  exist  now,  in  respect  to  the  origin, 
necessity,  or  expediency  of  the  "War  of  1812,  no  liberal  and  just 
man  can  well  deny  that  there  were  grounds  of  opposition  to  it 
on  which  a  patriotic  statesman  could  enter  the  public  service  of 
a  community  whose  opinions  had  been  from  the  first  adverse  to 
the  policy  which  had  led  to  it,  and  whose  interests  were  be 
lieved  to  have  been  sacrificed  to  that  policy.  No  such  man  can 
deny  that  Mr.  "Webster's  statement  of  those  grounds  was  tem 
perate  and  thoughtful,  marked  alike  by  a  true  fidelity  to  the 
duties  which  a  citizen  owes  to  the  government  of  his  country, 
and  a  manly  assertion  of  the  duties  which  that  government 
owes  to  the  interests  which  it  is  appointed  to  protect.  It  is  not 
correct  to  regard  the  maritime  interests  of  this  country  at  that 
period  as  bearing  so  small  and  insignificant  a  proportion  to 
what  may  be  considered  as  the  sum  of  all  the  industry  of  the 
country,  as  to  draw  down  upon  men  who  held  those  interests, 
on  account  of  their  opposition  to  the  war,  the  censure  that  is 
justly  applied  to  a  factiously  sectional  resistance  against  great 
national  measures.  The  object  for  which  the  war  was  avowedly 
begun  was  the  vindication  of  our  rights  and  the  protection  of 
our  interests  as  a  commercial  people.  Those  interests  were  so 
large  that  a  single  State  then  possessed  four  times  as  much  ship 
ping  as  was  owned  by  England  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  Nor 
was  the  relation  of  our  shipping  to  the  producing  industry  of 
the  country  one  that  should  have  caused  its  anxiety  to  be 
treated  as  a  narrow  and  selfish  local  jealousy.  In  the  year  pre 
ceding  the  declaration  of  war  (1811),  the  value  of  five  principal 
articles  of  our  exports,  of  domestic  production,  exceeded  forty- 
five  millions  of  dollars ; l  a  larger  amount,  with  two  exceptions, 
than  had  ever  been  sent  out  of  the  country  in  a  single  year  since 
the  adoption  of  the  Constitution.  Surely  it  cannot  be  said  that 
it  was  unreasonable  in  our  own  merchants  to  expect  to  be  the 
carriers  of  this  mass  of  our  own  exports,  and  of  the  imports  for 
which  it  was  exchanged ;  or  that  their  criticism  of  a  public 
policy,  which  was  believed  to  deal  unwisely  with  these  great 
maritime  concerns,  had  no  relation  to  the  producing  interests 
of  the  whole  Union.  That  the  war  finally  resulted  in  what 
could  be  regarded  as  a  success,  is  due,  in  a  large  measure,  to  the 

1  They  consisted  of  cotton,  tobacco,  flour,  rice,  and  manufactures. 


1812.]  PRINCIPLES  OF  OPPOSITION.  107 

employment  and  the  achievements  of  the  navy ;  that  arm  of  na 
tional  defence  which  is  at  once  fostered  by  a  great  national 
commerce,  and  can  alone  effectually  vindicate  the  rights  of  a 
commercial  people. 

Mr.  "Webster's  address  before  the  "Washington  Society  im 
mediately  passed  through  two  editions.  It  led  to  his  appoint 
ment  as  a  delegate  from  the  town  of  Portsmouth  to  attend  an 
assembly  of  the  people  of  the  county  of  Rockingham,  which  was 
convened  in  the  following  August,  for  the  purpose  of  expressing 
to  the  Government,  in  a  direct  manner,  their  opposition  to  the 
war,  and  their  opinions  respecting  the  means  by  which  it  should 
be  brought  to  a  speedy  and  honorable  termination.  This  was 
done  in  the  form  of  a  memorial,  addressed  to  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  and  signed  by  a  committee  representing 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  delegates.  The  paper  adopted  for 
this  purpose  was  written  by  Mr.  Webster,  and  is  the  document 
referred  to  in  his  Autobiography,  and  then  and  since  known  as 
"  The  Rockingham  Memorial."  Its  length  and  character,  and 
the  character  of  the  assembly — which  was  what  would  now  be 
called  a  mass  convention — show  that  he  had  been  selected  to 
prepare  it  before  the  day  of  the  meeting.  Many  persons  of  dis 
tinction  in  that  part  of  the  State,  much  older  than  himself,  were 
named  on  the  committee,  but  he  was  placed  at  its  head,  and  re 
ported  the  memorial.  It  was  a  carefully-written  document, 
reviewing  thoroughly  the  course  of  policy  which  had  brought 
about  the  war ;  explaining  the  grounds  of  opposition  to  it  which 
the  people  in  whose  name  it  spoke  felt  themselves  justified  in 
assuming ;  pointing  out  and  remonstrating  against  its  tendency 
to  produce  an  alliance  with  France ;  urging  immediate  naval 
preparations,  and  a  reliance  on  that  means  of  defence;  and 
recommending  the  adoption  of  a  system  that  would  speedily  re 
store  the  blessings  of  peace  and  commerce.  On  the  subject  of 
fidelity  to  the  Union,  it  thus  stated  the  principles  of  those  who, 
in  this  manner,  as  citizens  of  a  free  republic,  addressed  them 
selves  to  its  chief  magistrate  : 

"  We  are,  sir,  from  principle  and  habit,  attached  to  the  Union  of  the 
States.  But  our  attachment  is  to  the  substance,  and  not  to  the  form.  It 
is  to  the  good  which  this  Union  is  capable  of  producing,  and  not  to  the 
evil  which  is  suffered  unnaturally  to  grow  out  of  it.  If  the  time  should 


108  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IV. 

ever  arrive  when  this  Union  shall  be  holden  together  by  nothing  but  the 
authority  of  law ;  when  its  incorporating,  vital  principle  shall  become 
extinct ;  when  its  principal  exercises  shall  consist  in  acts  of  power  and  au 
thority,  not  of  protection  and  beneficence ;  when  it  shall  lose  the  strong 
bond  which  it  hath  hitherto  had  in  the  public  affections ;  and  when,  con 
sequently,  we  shall  be  one,  not  in  interest  and  mutual  regard,  but  in  name 
and  form  only — we,  sir,  shall  look  on  that  hour  as  the  closing  scene  of  our 
country's  prosperity. 

"  We  shrink  from  the  separation  of  the  States,  as  an  event  fraught  with 
incalculable  evils,  and  it  is  among  our  strongest  objections  to  the  present 
course  of  measures,  that  they  have,  in  our  opinion,  a  very  dangerous  and 
alarming  bearing  on  such  an  event.  If  a  separation  of  the  States  ever 
should  take  place,  it  will  be  on  some  occasion  when  one  portion  of  the 
country  undertakes  to  control,  to  regulate,  and  to  sacrifice  the  interest  of 
another ;  when  a  small  and  heated  majority  in  the  Government,  taking 
counsel  of  their  passions,  and  not  of  their  reason,  contemptuously  disre 
garding  the  interests  and  perhaps  stopping  the  mouths  of  a  large  and 
respectable  minority,  shall,  by  hasty,  rash,  and  ruinous  measures,  threaten 
to  destroy  essential  rights,  and  lay  waste  the  most  important  interests. 

"  It  shall  be  our  most  fervent  supplication  to  Heaven  to  avert  both  the 
event  and  the  occasion ;  and  the  Government  may  be  assured  that  the  tie 
that  binds  us  to  the  Union  will  never  be  broken  by  us." 

Toward  the  President  himself  this  memorial  was  courteous 
and  dignified  in  its  tone.  It  pressed  indeed  the  argumentum 
ad  hominem,  by  reminding  the  President  of  the  opinions  which . 
he  had  frequently  expressed,  when  advocating  the  adoption  of 
the  Constitution,  of  the  necessity  for  an  acquisition  of  maritime 
strength,  in  providing  and  maintaining  a  national  navy.  The 
neglect  into  which  the  navy  had  been  suffered  to  fall,  by  those 
with  whom  Mr.  Madison  had  politically  acted  since  the  Admin 
istration  of  the  elder  Adams  went  out  of  power,  fully  justified 
this  personal  appeal.  But  it  was  couched  in  terms  of  the 
utmost  respect ;  and  as  Mr.  "Webster  soon  after  entered  Con 
gress,  and  stood  at  once  and  always  remained  in  friendly  per 
sonal  relations  with  Mr.  Madison,  it  is  certain  that  the  latter 
would  have  .concurred  in  Mr.  "Webster's  own  observation — 
made  nearly  twenty  years  afterward — that  there  was  nothing 
in  this  paper  which  the  writer  ever  needed  to  regret.  It  marks 
the  character  of  the  opposition  which  he  continued  to  maintain 
to  the  Administration  of  Mr.  Madison,  so  long  and  so  far  as  he 
maintained  any. 

Among  the  purposes  for  which  the  Rockingham  convention 


1813.]  CONDUCT  OF  FKAXCE.  109 

was  assembled,  was  the  nomination  of  candidates  for  the  ap 
proaching  general  election.  Mr.  Webster  was  nominated  as  a 
Representative  to  the  Thirteenth  Congress,  to  which  he  was 
subsequently  elected,  and  in  which  he  took  his  seat  on  the  24th 
of  May,  1813.1 

There  were  several  young  men  in  this  Congress  of  high 
talent,  some  of  whom  were  afterward  known  to  fame.  The 
two  persons  were  there,  with  whose  names  Mr.  "Webster's  has 
been  more  associated  than  with  those  of  any  others  of  his  con 
temporaries,  as  standing  upon  the  same  plane  of  intellect. 
Henry  Clay  was  the  Speaker  of  this  House,  and  John  C.  Cal- 
houn  was  the  leading  member  upon  the  floor,  both  being  on  the 
side  of  the  Administration.  Among  those  of  lesser  mark,  but 
still  prominent  then  and  always  while  they  lived,  were  "Wil 
liam  Gaston,  of  North  Carolina  ;  John  McLean,  of  Ohio ; 
John  Forsyth,  and  George  M.  Troup,  of  Georgia  ;  Charles 
J.  Ingersoll,  of  Pennsylvania;  and  Felix  Grundy,  of  Ten 
nessee. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  Mr.  "Webster,  on  entering  Congress, 
was,  to  introduce  certain  resolutions,  calling  upon  the  Executive 
for  information  respecting  the  time  and  mode  in  which  the  re 
peal  of  the  French  Decrees  had  been  communicated  to  our  Gov 
ernment.  As  this  whole  matter  stood  before  the  public  at  the 
time  of  the  declaration  of  war,  it  appeared  either  that  our  Gov 
ernment  had  been  deceived  by  the  French  ministry,  or  that 
they  were  in  possession  of  a  repealing  decree  when  the.  war  was 
declared,  and  had  withheld  it ;  for  no  such  decree  had  made  its 
appearance  until  after  the  declaration  of  war  had  passed  through 
Congress.  Mr.  "Webster  considered  that  the  reputation  of  the 
country  was  involved  in  this  affair,  because  the  French  foreign 
secretary  had  declared  to  the  American  minister  in  Paris,  on  the 
1st  of  May,  1812,  that  a  copy  of  the  repealing  decree  had  been 
furnished  to  his  predecessor,  and  that  another  had  been  trans 
mitted  to  the  French  minister  at  "Washington  at  the  time  of  its 
date,  which  was  April  28,  1811.  Mr.  Webster,  therefore,  for 
the  purpose  of  eliciting  all  the  facts,  and  in  order  to  have  them 

1  A  law  of  the  previous  Congress  had  menced  on  that  day,  and  was  termi- 
appointed  the  next  meeting  of  that  body  nated  on  the  2d  of  August.  The  see- 
to  be  held  May  24,  1813.  The  first  ses-  ond  session  commenced  December  6, 
sion  of  the  Thirteenth  Congress  com-  1813. 


110  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IV. 

placed  in  their  true  light  before  the  country,  so  framed  his  reso 
lutions  that,  if  they  were  answered  at  all,  the  whole  matter  must 
be  disclosed.  The  resolutions  were  introduced  by  him  on  the 
10th  of  June,  1813,  accompanied  by  some  temperate  remarks 
concerning  the  doubt  in  which  this  matter  was  then  en 
veloped.1 

A  long  and  somewhat  angry  debate  ensued,  in  which  Mr. 
Calhoun  led  the  defence  of  the  Administration  with  great  spirit 
and  warmth.  He  was  at  first  somewhat  disposed  to  stifle  the 
inquiry.  But  the  House  was  not  in  a  mood  to  do  this.  The  war 
was  not  at  that  time  so  popular  that  the  members  could  refuse 
an  inquiry  into  the  measures  that  had  led  to  it.  Indeed,  the 
declaration  of  war  had  originally  passed  a  House  of  one  hundred 
and  twenty-eight  members  by  a  majority  of  thirty  votes  only, 
and  a  Senate  of  thirty-two  members  by  a  majority  of  six ;  while 
an  amendment  to  include  France  in  the  war  was  negatived  in 
the  Senate  by  the  meagre  majority  of  four.  The  friends  of  the 
Administration  were  now,  therefore,  in  a  new  Congress,  obliged 
to  meet  this  inquiry,  without  having  at  their  command  such  a 
popular  enthusiasm  for  the  war  as  might  have  justified  their  re 
fusal,  if  such  enthusiasm  had  existed.  The  debate  on  the  reso 
lutions  continued  at  intervals  until  the  21st  of  June,  but  they 
were  all  finally  passed  as  they  were  introduced,  by  very  large 

1  What  Mr.  Webster  said  on  this  oc-  t™0"  JUD6E  8TORV-1 

casion  strongly  attracted  the  attention  of  „  MT  DEAB  ^BBfM'cBftS&ce 

Chief-Justice  Marshall.      Nearly  twenty  (Marshall)  had  received  the  volume  of  your 

years  afterward,  when  Mr.  Webster's  col-  speeches  this  morning,  he  came  into  my 

loAtod  «nppp}ip«wprp  first  nnhlisliPfl  it  nn  chamber,  and  told  me  he  had  been  looking 

lected  speeches  were  nrst  published,  it  ap-  oyer  tne  indeXi  and  noticed  two  omissions 

pears  from  the  following  letters  that  the  Of  speeches  which  he  remembered  you  had 

Chief  Justice  was  disappointed  at  finding  made  in  Congress  at  an  early  period  of  your 

tliSa  «no  ^mittprl  fmrn  tlhp  volnmp  •  public  life,  and  which  he  had  then  read.   One 

this  one  omitted  from  the  volume .  ^ag  on  go'me  rego]utiongi  calling  upon  Presi. 

[FHOM  CHIEF-JUSTICE  MARSHALL.]  <jent  Madison  for  the  proof  of  the  repeal  of 

"January  23. 1831.  the  Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees ;  the  other,  on 

"DEAB  SIR:  I  have  just  received  the  copy  the  subject  of  the  Previous  Question.     He 

of  your  '  Speeches  and  Forensic  Arguments,'  observed :  '  I  read  these  speeches  with  very 

and  am  much  flattered  by  this  mark  of  your  great  pleasure  and  satisfaction  at  the  time, 

attention.    I  beg  you  to  present  my  compli-  At  the  time  when  the  first  was  delivered,  I  did 

ments  to  Mrs.  Webster  :  and  to  say  that  I  not  know  Mr.  Webster  ;  but  I  was  so  much 

think  myself,  in  part,  indebted  to  her  for  it.  struck  with  it,  that  I  did  not  hesitate  then  to 

At  all  events,  she  has,  I  perceive,  had  some  state  that  Mr.  Webster  was  a  very  able  man, 

agency  in  conferring  the  favor.  and  would  become  one  of  the  very  first  states- 

"  I  shall  read  the  volume  with  pleasure,  men  in  America,  and  perhaps  the  very  first.' 
and  preserve  it  with  care.  "  Such  praise  from  such  a  source  ought  to 

"  Will  you  allow  me  to  say  that,  on  look-  be  very  gratifying..    Consider  that  he  is  now 

ing  over  the  contents,  I  felt  at  the  first  mo-  seventy -five  years  old,  and  that  he  speaks 

ment  some  disappointment  at  not  seeing  two  of  his  recollections  of  you  some  eighteen 

speeches  delivered  by  you  in  the  first  Con-  years  ago  with  a  freshness  which  shows  you 

gress,  I  believe,  of  which  you  were  a  mem-  how  deeply  your  reasoning  impressed  itself 

ber.  on  his  mind.    Keep  this  in  memoriam  rei. 

"  With  great  and  respectful  esteem,  «  Yours  very  truly, 

"  I  ain,  your  obedient,  "  JOSEPH  STORY. 

"  J.  MARSHALL."  "  The  Hon.  Daniel  Webster." 


1813.]  MISTAKES  OF  OUR  GOVERNMENT.  HI 

majorities.     Mr.  Webster  had  intended  to  close  the  discussion 
upon  them,  but  he  found  it  unnecessary.1 

Mr.  Jeremiah  Mason  had  been  recently  chosen  a  Senator 
from  JSTew  Hampshire,  and  he  arrived  and  took  his  seat  in  the 
Senate  while  these  resolutions  were  under  discussion  in  the 
House.  The  answer  to  them  was  made  by  the  Secretary  of 
State,  Mr.  Monroe,  on  the  12th  of  July.  It  disclosed  the  fact 
that  our  Government  had  received  no  intelligence  of  the  repeal 
ing  decree  of  April  28, 1811,  until  the  13th  of  July,  1812,  nearly 
a  month  after  the  declaration  of  war  against  England.  It  fol 
lowed,  therefore,  that  our  reliance  on  the  action  of  France  was 
based  wholly  upon  the  declaration  of  August  5,  1810,  which,  it 
was  argued  by  Mr.  Monroe,  had  fully  satisfied  every  claim  of 
the  British  Government  according  to  their  own  principles,  and 
ought  to  have  been  received  by  them  as  sufficient  cause  for 
a  repeal  of  their  Orders  in  Council.  On  this  point  there  was  of 
course  a  great  difference  of  opinion  between  those  who  favored 
the  war  against  England  and  those  who  believed  that  France 
ought  to  have  been  selected  as  our  enemy,  or  at  least  that  she 
should  have  been  dealt  with  in  a  very  different  way  from  that 
which  had  been  adopted.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  probable 
that,  if  there  had  been  no  such  existing  cause  of  irritation 
against  England  as  her  oppressive  pretension  of  a  right  to 
search  our  vessels  for  seamen  whose  allegiance  she  claimed, 
there  would  not  have  been  the  same  inclination  to  push  matters 
to  an  extremity  with  her,  by  adopting  so  untenable  a  ground  in 
reference  to  the  French  Decrees.  The  French  declaration  of 
August  5,  1810,  was  deceptive,  and  was  intended  to  be  so ; 2 

1  "  You  have  learned  the  fate  of  my  said  ;  "  France  has  done  nothing  toward 
resolutions.     We  had  a  warm  time  of  it  adjusting  our  differences  with  her.     It  is 
for  four  days,  and  then  the  other  side  de-  understood   that  the  Berlin   and  Milan 
clined  further  discussion.    I  had  prepared  Decrees  are  not  in  force  against    the 
myself  for  a  little  speech,  but  the  neces-  United  States,  and  no  contravention  of 
sity  of  speaking  was  prevented.     I  went  them  can  be  established  against  her.     On 
with  Rhea,  of  Tennessee,  to  deliver  the  the  contrary,  positive  cases  rebut  the  al- 
resolutions  to   the   President.     I  found  legation.     Still,  the  manner  of  the  French 
him  in  his  bed,  sick  of  a  fever.     I  gave  Government  betrays  the  design  of  leaving 
them  to  him,  and  he  merely  answered  Great  Britain  a  pretext  for  enforcing  her 
that  they  would  be  attended  to." — (Letter  Orders  in  Council.     And  in  all  other  re- 
to  Ezekiel  Webster,  June  28,  1813.)  spects  the  grounds  of  our  complaints  re- 

2  Mr.  Madison  had  become  convinced  main  the  same.     The  utmost  address  has 
of  this  before   our   declaration  of  war  been  played  off  on  Mr.  Barlow's  hopes 
against  England.     In  a  private  letter  to  and    wishes,"  etc.  —  ( Writings  of  Mr. 
Mr.  Jefferson,  written  May  25,  1812,  he  Madison,  vol.  ii.,  p.  535.)      This  letter 


112 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER, 


[On.  IV. 


and,  as  each  of  the  belligerents  rested  the  apology  for  its  in 
jurious  edicts  upon  the  law  of  retaliation  and  self-defence,  a 
neutral,  that  could  present  to  one  of  them  no  better  proof  of  the 
sincerity  and  good  faith  of  its  adversary  than  that  French  dec 
laration,  had  but  a  weak  practical  ground  on  which  to  depend, 
however  strong  might  be  the  argument  against  the  inherent 
illegality  and  wrong  of  the  whole  system  on  which  the  edicts 
were  justified  by  either  of  the  two  powers.  * 


discloses  two  remarkable  facts  :  one,  that 
the  President  still  clung  to  the  idea  that 
the  French  Decrees  were  not  enforced 
against  us  after  August  5, 1810,  notwith 
standing  our  vessels  were  still  remaining 
under  sequestration,  and  no  redress  could 
be  obtained ;  the  other,  that  the  Presi 
dent  had  at  length  penetrated  the  design 
of  the  French  Government,  namely,  not  to 
have  the  English  Orders  in  Council  re 
pealed.  But  we  had  gone  too  far  in  the 
direction  in  which  France  wished  us  to 
go  to  retrace  our  steps,  although  the 
President's  private  opinion  of  her  con 
duct  and  designs  did  not  now  differ  much 
from  that  entertained  by  the  Federalists. 
What  his  opinion  was  will  appear  further 
by  an  extract  from  a  private  letter  which 
he  wrote  to  Mr.  Barlow  under  date  of 
August  11,  1812:  "  The  conduct  of  the 
French  Government,  explained  in  yours 
of  the ,  on  the  subject  of  the  de 
cree  of  April,  1811,  will  be  an  everlast 
ing  reproach  to  it.  It  is  the  more  shame 
ful  as,  departing  from  the  declaration  to 
General  Armstrong  [August,  1810],  of 
which  the  enforcement  of  the  non-impor 
tation  was  the  effect,  the  revoking  decree 
assumes  this  as  the  cause,  and  itself  as 
the  effect ;  and  thus  transfers  to  this  Gov 
ernment  the  inconsistency  of  its  author-" 
— (Ibid.,  p.  540.)  Yet,  when  this  sub 
ject  was  brought  before  Congress  at  the 
next  session,  not  only  did  the  Secretary 
of  State  argue  that  the  conduct  of  France 
had  deprived  Great  Britain  of  all  reason 
able  pretext  for  continuing  her  Orders, 
but  the  whole  force  of  the  Administra 
tion  was  exerted  on  the  floor  of  the 
House  in  support  of  that  view,  as  the 
splendid  abilities  of  Mr.  Pinkney  had 
been  exerted  previously  in  London  in  the 
same  line  of  argument.  As  we  now 
know  the  private  feelings  and  convictions 
of  Mr.  Madison,  the  opponents  of  his 
Administration  ought  to  be  relieved  of 
the  charge  of  factiousness,  even  if  they 
did  maintain  that  the  conduct  of  France 


had  been  animated  by  a  purpose  to  lead 
us  into  a  war  with  England. 

1  There  is  a  judgment  of  Sir  William 
Scott,  pronouncing  condemnation  in  1811 
of  certain  American  vessels  under  the 
Orders  in  Council,  in  which  that  most 
able  judge  employed  his  acute  and  pow 
erful  intellect  in  framing  a  justification 
for  those  orders  upon  the  doctrine  of  re 
taliation.  The  question  had  been  present 
ed  to  him  in  the  argument,  what  would 
be  his  duty  as  an  admiralty  judge,  under 
Orders  in  Council  that  were  repugnant  to 
the  law  of  nations.  After  admitting  that 
his  court  was  bound  to  administer  the 
law  of  nations  to  the  subjects  of  other 
countries  in  their  relations  with  Great 
Britain,  he  parried  the  question  that  had 
been  pressed  upon  him  by  saying  that 
the  king  in  council  had  legislative  author 
ity  over  the  court ;  that  the  law  of  na 
tions  constituted  the  unwritten  law,  and 
the  king's  Orders  in  Council  the  written 
law  of  the  court ;  and  that  there  was  in 
this  instance  no  repugnance  between 
these  two  laws,  because  the  king's  or 
ders  and  instructions  were  to  be  pre 
sumed,  under  the  given  circumstances, 
to  conform  themselves  to  the  principles 
of  the  unwritten  law.  But  as  it  could 
not  escape  a  mind  of  such  penetration 
that  this  led  directly  to  the  conse 
quence  that  the  legislative  will  of  a  sin 
gle  belligerent  may  dictate  what  the  law 
of  nations  is,  so  as  to  bind  the  judicial 
action  of  a  tribunal  that  sits  to  adminis 
ter  that  law  between  its  own  sovereign 
and  the  subjects  of  other  countries,  he 
proceeded  to  say,  further,  that  the  Orders 
in  Council  which  he  had  then  to  enforce 
were  not  repugnant  to  the  law  of  nations, 
because  they  were  retaliatory.  This  was 
at  least  an  admission  that  the  doctrine 
of  presumption  was  not  quite  sufficient, 
and  that  it  was  necessary  to  find  in  the 
law  of  nations  itself  some  principle  that 
would  make  the  orders  conformable  to 
what  a  belligerent  may  lawfully  do.  He 


1813.] 


MR.  WEBSTER'S  RESOLUTIONS  OP  1813. 


113 


The  British  Orders  in  Council  were  repealed  on  the  23d  of 
June,  1812,  professedly  upon  the  ground  that  the  French  De 
crees  had  been  repealed  on  the  28th  of  April,  1811.  When  the 
answer  of  our  Secretary  of  State  to  Mr.  Webster's  resolutions 
was  received  in  the  House  of  Kepresentatives,  on  the  12th  of 
July,  1813,  it  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Rela 
tions,  of  which  Mr.  Calhoun  was  chairman,  with  an  order  to 
print  five  thousand  copies  of  it.  Mr.  Webster,  who  had  re 
mained  for  some  time  longer  than  he  had  intended,  waiting  for 
the  answer  of  the  secretary,  had  then  left  Washington  on  his 
return  home,  supposing  that  the  subject  would  not  be  again 
brought  before  the  House  during  that  session.  On  the  day  fol- 


found  this  principle  in  the  doctrine  of 
retaliation.  He  frankly  admitted  that  the 
orders  would  be  unjust  if  they  ceased  to 
be  retaliatory ;  and  that  they  would  cease 
to  be  retaliatory  from  the  moment  the 
enemy  should  retract  in  a  -sincere  man 
ner  those  measures  of  his  against  which 
they  were  intended  to  retaliate.  This 
doctrine,  applied  to  the  real  circum 
stances  of  the  case,  amounts  to  this,  that 
whenever  a  belligerent  chooses  to  say 
that  the  hostile  measures  of  his  adver 
sary  require  him,  in  self-defence,  to  re 
sort  to  measures  of  retaliation,  his  right 
of  retaliation  is  superior  to  all  the  rights 
of  all  the  neutral  nations ;  and  that  until 
the  neutral  nations  can,  by  forcing  his 
adversary  to  change  his  course,  relieve 
him  of  the  necessity  of  retaliating,  they 
must  submit  to  the  entire  displacement 
and  overthrow  of  the  rights  which,  but 
for  this  effect  of  his  right  of  retaliation, 
would  belong  to  them.  But  it  is  obvious 
that  if  the  unwritten  law  of  nations  em 
braces  this  principle,  there  are  no  such 
things  as  the  rights  of  neutrals,  or  rights 
which  belong  to  nations  which  are  not  at 
war,  when  some  nations  are  at  war.  It 
is,  however,  quite  certain  that  the  law  of 
nations  does  affix  limits  to  the  operation 
of  retaliatory  measures  upon  the  rights 
of  nations  that  are  not  engaged  in  the 
war ;  and  the  real  question  in  relation  to 
the  English  Orders  and  the  French  De 
crees  was,  whether,  admitting  that  they 
were  retaliatory,  or  claimed  to  be  such, 
they  were  within  or  without  the  limita 
tions  which  the  law  of  nations  has  estab 
lished  as  the  sphere  in  which  the  pro 
ceedings  of  nations  at  war  can  affect  the 
rights  of  nations  that  are  not  at  war.  At 


the  present  day  there  would  be  very  little 
hesitation  on  the  part  of  this  country  in 
saying  to  any  two  belligerents,  that  this 
doctrine  of  retaliation  has  limits  which 
must  be  respected.  That  we  did  not  at 
that  time  so  act  toward  both  England  and 
France,  without  complicating  ourselves 
in  efforts  to  make  one  of  them  recede  in 
order  to  remove  the  other's  claim  of  re 
taliation,  must  be  imputed  to  our  com 
parative  weakness.  Those  who  opposed 
the  war  with  England  would  have  pre 
ferred  to  have  our  Government  deal  at 
once  with  the  original  and  inherent  wrong 
in  the  conduct  of  both  the  belligerents, 
especially  as  they  felt  that  the  insults 
heaped  upon  us  by  France  were  even 
more  aggravated  than  the  injuries  done 
to  us  by  England ;  and,  if  we  had  been 
then  what  we  are  now,  it  is  probable  that 
the  nation  would  have  tolerated  no  se 
lection  of  either  adversary,  but  would 
have  left  each  to  choose  for  itself  our 
friendship  or  our  hostility.  As  it  was, 
we  were  led,  by  a  variety  of  causes,  some 
of  which  our  Administration  could  not 
control,  to  choose  for  ourselves  the  hol 
low  and  contemptuous  friendship  of 
France  and  the  open  enmity  of  England. 
(I  have  not  been  able  to  find  this  judg 
ment  of  Sir  William  Scott  in  the  regular 
reports  of  his  court.  But  a  copy  of  it 
was  transmitted  by  our  charge  at  London 
to  our  Secretary  of  State,  in  June,  1811, 
and  it  is  given  in  the  annals  of  Congress, 
Twelfth  Congress,  1811-'12,  Appendix,  p. 
1742.  It  was  pronounced  on  the  30th 
of  May,  1811,  preparatory  to  a  decree 
condemning  the  brig  Fox  and  a  large  num 
ber  of  other  American  vessels  which  had 
been  seized  under  the  Orders  in  Council.) 


114  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IV. 

lowing  the  reference,  Mr.  Calhoun  made  a  report,  which  took 
the  ground  that  the  pressure  of  our  measures  and  the  determi 
nation  of  Congress  to  redress  our  wrongs  by  arms,  and  not  the 
repeal  of  the  French  Decrees,  had  broken  down  the  Orders  in 
Council.  The  report  closed  with  recommending  the  passage  of 
a  resolution  approving  the  conduct  of  the  Executive  in  relation 
to  the  various  subjects  embraced  in  Mr.  Webster's  resolutions. 
Several  efforts  were  subsequently  made  to  have  this  report  con 
sidered,  but  the  House  refused  to  act  upon  it  at  this  session. 
On  the  2d  of  August,  Congress  adjourned  until  the  first  Mon 
day  in  the  ensuing  December.1 

Although  Mr.  Webster  had  been  present  in  this  Congress 
but  for  a  few  weeks,  he  had  already  become  a  marked  man. 
He  had  taken  his  stand  as  one  of  the  leading  opponents  of  the 
war,  and  had  at  the  same  time  shown  to  the  House  and  to  the 
country  what  the  character  of  his  opposition  was  to  be.  His 
firmness  in  carrying  this  inquiry  through  the  House  had  satis 
fied  every  one  that  he  was  not  a  person  to  be  turned  from  his 
purpose  in  any  matter  in  which  he  believed  the  honor  of  the 
country  to  be  involved  ;  while  it  was  equally  apparent  that  he 
intended  to  hold  the  Administration  to  nothing  but  its  just  de 
gree  of  responsibility  to  public  opinion  in  respect  to  the  course 
of  its  action  previous  to  the  war.  In  future  sessions,  it  was  to 
become  his  duty  to  oppose  measures  connected  with  the  con 
duct  of  the  war,  which  he  believed  to  be  in  conflict  with  the 
fundamental  rights  of  the  citizen,  or  in  contravention  of  a  sound 
public  policy. 

1  The  temper  of  the  public  mind  in  the  nation  almost  una  voce.  Even  with- 
this  country  at  the  time  of  the  adjourn-  out  a  peace  with  England,  the  further  re- 
ment  may  be  learned  from  Mr.  Madison's  fusal  or  prevarications  of  France  on  the 
private  letter  to  Mr.  Barlow,  already  re-  subject  of  redress  may  be  expected  to 
ferred  tp,  which  was  written  in  the  same  produce  measures  of  hostility  against  her 
month  :  "  In  the  event  of  a  pacification  at  the  ensuing  session  of  Congress.  This 
with  Great  Britain,  the  full  tide  of  indig-  result  is  the  more  probable,  as  the  gen- 
nation  with  which  the  public  mind  here  eral  exasperation  will  coincide  with  the 
is  boiling  will  be  directed  against  France,  calculations  of  not  a  few,  that  a  double 
if  not  obviated  by  a  due  reparation  of  war  «  the  shortest  road  to  peace."— (  Wri- 
her  wrongs.  War  will  be  called  for  by  tings  of  Madison,  vol.  ii.,  p.  541.) 


1813.]  DESTRUCTION  OF  MR.  WEBSTER'S  HOUSE.  115 


CHAPTER   Y. 
1813-1814 

MR.  WEBSTER'S  LIFE  AT  PORTSMOUTH — BIRTH  OF  DANIEL  FLETCHER 
GREAT  FIRE  IN"  THE  TOWN CONGRESS  OF  1813-'14 RESOLU 
TIONS  ON  FRENCH  DECREES — MILITARY  TRIALS  FOR  TREASON 

ENCOURAGEMENT  OF  ENLISTMENTS MODIFICATION  OF  THE  EM 
BARGO REPEAL  OF  THE  RESTRICTIVE  SYSTEM DOMESTIC  MAN 
UFACTURES PRACTICE  IN  SUPREME  COURT RETURNS  HOME. 

ME.  WEBSTEE  reached  his  home  in  Portsmouth,  from  the 
special  session  of  1813,  at  about  midsummer,  and  im 
mediately  resumed  his  usual  avocations.  His  children  were 
now  two — Grace,  who  has  been  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter, 
and  Daniel  Fletcher,  who  was  born  July  23, 1813.  Of  his  life 
at  this  time,  we  have  already  had  some  reminiscences  from  the 
pen  of  Mr.  Ticknor. 

The  summer  and  autumn  passed  on  as  usual,  but  in  De 
cember  he  was  again  on  his  way  to  attend  the  regular  session 
of  Congress,  leaving  Mrs.  Webster  and  the  children  at  home. 
While  he  was  on  this  journey,  a  great  conflagration  swept  over 
a  considerable  part  of  the  town  of  Portsmouth,  and  his  house 
was  burnt,  with  others.  The  house  had  been  purchased  by 
Mr.  Webster  a  short  time  before,  for  the  sum  of  six  thousand 
dollars.  In  addition  to  its  furniture,  his  library  was  also  lost ; 
and,  as  there  was  no  insurance  on  any  part  of  the  property,  all 
that  he  had  of  worldly  goods  was  completely  gone.  Mrs.  Web 
ster  and  the  children  found  a  temporary  home  in  the  family  of 


116  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  V. 

Mr.  Mason.  In  the  mean  time,  the  news  of  the  fire,  which  had 
been  attended  with  some  appalling  circumstances,  had  reached 
Washington,  where  Mr.  "Webster,  on  his  arrival,  first  met  the 
account.  Before  he  could  open  his  letters,  his  firmness  was  put 
to  a  great  trial,  by  the  somewhat  exaggerated  statements  of 
those  who  hastened  to  give  him  information.  But  a  cheerful 
letter  from  his  wife,  advising  him  not  to  return,  reassured  him ; 
and  "  finding  nothing  lost,"  he  says,  "  but  house  and  property," 
and  considering  how  critical  were  the  public  affairs,  he  com 
mended  his  little  family  to  their  friends,  and  remained  at  Wash 
ington  through  the  winter. 

There  was,  indeed,  no  little  need  for  such  men,  even  if  they 
were  not  political  friends  of  the  Administration.  The  war, 
although  there  had  been  some  brilliant  successes  on  the  Lakes 
and  one  important  victory  on  the  ocean,  had  not  been  prosper 
ous  on  the  land.  In  Europe,  the  star  of  Bonaparte  was  no 
longer  in  the  ascendant — disaster  had  overtaken  him;  and 
England,  at  the  head  of  the  great  combination  that  was  now 
closing  around  him,  was  not  unlikely  to  be  in  a  situation  to 
carry  on  her  contest  with  us  more  vigorously  than  before.  Our 
Administration,  not  a  strong  one,  was  in  want  of  both  men 
and  money.  Perplexed,  and  not  sure  of  an  undivided  support 
from  its  own  party,  it  was  in  danger  of  following  counsels 
insufficiently  weighed.  It  was  conducting  the  first  impor 
tant  war  that  had  been  undertaken  since  the  establishment  of 
the  Constitution ;  and  on  that  war  the  sentiments  of  the  peo 
ple  were  by  no  means  unanimous.  New  measures  were  to  be 
brought  forward,  new  powers  were  to  be  exercised,  which  might 
subject  the  Constitution  to  a  severe  test.  These  measures  were 
to  undergo  the  ordeal  of  discussion  by  the  representatives  of 
a  people  who  had  been  accustomed  to  the  utmost  freedom  of 
debate  and  criticism ;  who  had  not  learned  to  surrender  that 
freedom  to  the  demands  of  official  judgment ;  and  who  would 
be  certain  to  insist  that  the  hitherto  untried  powers  of  war, 
embraced  in  the  Constitution,  should  not  be  pressed  to  its  injury 
and  its  possible  overthrow.  If  the  war  was  to  go  on,  its  policy 
was  to  be  settled ;  and  perhaps  there  never  has  been  a  war  con 
ducted  by  a  constitutional  government  and  in  behalf  of  a  free 
people,  in  which  the  restraining  influence  of  a  vigilant  and 


1813.]  OPPOSITION  TO  THE  WAR. 

upright  opposition  was  more  needed  than  it  was  in  giving 
direction  to  the  forces  and  consistency  to  the  aims  of  this  one. 
It  was  a  period  from  which  the  people  of  this  country  can  learn 
many  lessons.  Rash  men,  in  and  out  of  Congress,  there  doubt 
less  were,  in  the  opposition,  who  said  and  did  rash  things.  Pure 
and  patriotic  men  there  were,  connected  with  the  opposition, 
who  committed  the  mistake  of  leading  movements  that  were 
not  fully  explained ;  who  trusted  too  implicitly  to  the  ex 
cellence  of  their  own  motives  and  the  weight  of  their  own 
virtues,  and  left  that  which  could  be  misapprehended  or  dis 
torted  to  work  injury  in  the  minds  of  the  unsatisfied.  But 
through  the  whole  of  that  conflict  there  were  men  in  the  Fed 
eral  party,  in  both  Houses  of  Congress,  who  fulfilled  the  true 
function  of  an  opposition ;  who  made  the  limits  of  opposition 
so  clear,  that  they  incurred  no  merited  obloquy ;  who  were 
never  connected  with  any  occurrence  that  should  cause  their 
judgments  as  statesmen  to  be  impugned ;  who  spoke  firmly, 
but  always  temperately ;  and  who  never  spoke  but  to  save  a 
constitutional  principle,  or  to  insure  a  wiser  policy.  Of  these, 
Mr.  "Webster  was  one  of  the  foremost ;  on  the  floor  of  the  lower 
House  he  was  the  first. 

He  had  not  lost  sight  of  his  resolutions  of  the  last  session, 
which  called  for  information  respecting  the  repeal  of  the  French 
Decrees.  The  Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Monroe,  had  not  confined 
himself  to  furnishing  the  facts  inquired  for,  but  had  entered 
into  an  elaborate  defence  of  the  war.  Without  some  action 
upon  his  answer,  the  inference  would  be  that  it  was  regarded 
as  conclusive  upon  the  judgment  of  the  House  and  of  the  nation. 
The  House  had  now,  with  a  near  approach  to  unanimity,  ordered 
an  inquiry  into  the  causes  of  the  failure  of  our  arms.  Mr.  Web 
ster  deemed  it  equally  important  that  there  should  be  a  discus 
sion  of  the  grounds  of  the  war.  "  If,"  he  said,  "  its  advocates 
can  show  satisfactorily  that  this  war  was  undertaken  on  grounds 
plainly  and  manifestly  just ;  if  they  can  show  that  it  was  neces 
sary  and  unavoidable ;  that  it  is  strictly  an  American  war ;  that 
it  rests  solely  on  American  grounds ;  and  that  it  grew  out  of  a 
policy  just  and  impartial  as  it  related  to  the  belligerents  of  Eu 
rope — if  they  ever  make  all  this  manifest,  the  war  will  change 
its  character.  It  will  then  grow  as  energetic  as  it  now  is 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  V. 

feeble.  It  will  then  become  the  cause  of  the  people,  and  not 
the  cause  of  a  party."  He  therefore  sought  and  obtained  a 
reference  of  the  secretary's  answer  to  a  committee  of  the  whole. 
This  occurred  on  the  3d  of  January,  1814.  But  the  discussion 
was  never  allowed  to  take  place. 

Before  many  days  had  elapsed,  Mr.  Webster  felt  called  upon 
to  speak  in  terms  of  indignant  rebuke  of  a  project  which  he 
and  such  men  as  Gaston,  Stockton,  Hanson,  and  Cheves  re 
garded  as  a  proposition  deliberately  to  violate  the  Constitution. 
The  country  was  filled  with  rumors  of  treasonable  practices  by 
persons  who  were  said  to  have  given  information  to  the  enemy, 
that  had  assisted  his  military  movements.  The  party  spirit, 
that  ruled  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  per 
mitted  a  resolution  to  be  introduced,  contemplating  the  exten 
sion  of  the  rules  and  articles  of  war,  relating  to  spies,  to  citizens 
of  the  United  States.  This  was  tantamount  to  the  establishment 
of  a  military  jurisdiction  for  the  trial  of  citizens  charged  with 
the  offence  of  treason.  Robert  Wright,  of  Maryland,  was  the 
member  who  introduced  the  resolution,  instructing  a  committee 
of  the  whole  to  inquire  into  the  expediency  of  so  extending  the 
military  jurisdiction.  Mr.  Stockton  instantly  denounced  it  as 
a  proposition  unfit  to  be  even  referred  to  a  committee.  Other 
gentlemen  followed  him  in  the  same  strain,  when  Mr.  Webster 
arose  and  delivered  a  short  speech,  which  is  probably  very 
imperfectly  preserved,  but  of  which  enough  remains  to  vin 
dicate  his  opposition  to  the  measure.  After  declaring  his 
readiness  to  provide  additional  legal  punishments  for  any  de 
scription  of  offences,  he  proceeded  to  show  that  the  offences 
which  were  alleged  to  have  given  occasion  for  this  inquiry  con 
stituted  the  crime  of  treason,  as  it  stands  defined  in  the  Consti 
tution,  and  that  this  resolution  was  one  to  change  the  forum  for 
the  trial  of  that  offence : 

"  If  illegal  intercourse  with  the  enemy  existed,  he  should  go  as  far  as 
any  one  in  applying  constitutional  remedies  to  that  evil.  But  this  resolu 
tion  proposes,  in  effect,  to  consider  whether  it  is  not  expedient  to  try  accu 
sations  for  treason  before  military  instead  of  civil  tribunals.  However 
glaring  may  be  the  idea,  yet  such  is  in  truth  the  real  nature  of  the  prop 
osition.  It  is  to  change  the  forum  for  the  trial  of  treason.  The  mover 
of  the  resolution  and  the  gentleman  from  the  State  of  Georgia  (Mr.  Troup) 
have  not  left  any  doubt  on  this  subject.  They  have  alluded  to  cases  which 


1814.]  MILITARY  TRIALS  FOR  TREASON.  119 

they  suppose  the  resolution  to  embrace,  and  for  which  they  deem  it 
necessary  to  provide  military  punishment.  But  what  is  the  nature  of 
those  cases  ?  Are  they  not  cases  of  treason  ?  It  is  said  information  has 
been  communicated  to  the  enemy,  very  material  to  him,  respecting  the 
operation  of  our  own  forces,  by  citizens  of  the  United  States.  Signals  are 
said  to  have  been  made  for  this  purpose  on  the  St.  Lawrence  and  else 
where.  Do  gentlemen  suppose  that  the  act  of  communicating  to  the 
enemy  important  intelligence,  whether  by  signals  or  otherwise,  whereby  he 
is  the  better  able  to  defend  himself  or  attack  his  adversary,  is  not  treason  ? 
Certainly,  sir,  all  such  offences  as  gentlemen  have  mentioned  are  pro 
vided  for  by  law,  and  adequate  penalties  annexed  to  their  commission. 
The  simple  question  before  us  is,  whether  we  will  consider  the  propriety 
of  talcing  the  power  of  trying  for  these  offences  from  the  courts  of  law, 
where  the  Constitution  has  placed  it,  and  confer  it  on  the  military.  Sir, 
the  proposition  strikes  me  as  monstrous.  I  cannot  consent  to  entertain 
the  consideration  of  it  even  for  a  moment.  It  goes  to  destroy  the  plainest 
constitutional  provisions.  If  it  should  prevail,  I  should  not  hesitate  to 
pronounce  it  a  most  enormous  stride  of  usurpation.  Nothing  in  any  gov 
ernment  called  a  free  one,  even  in  the  worst  of  times,  has  exceeded  it.  I 
am  utterly  shocked  at  the  arguments  offered  in  favor  of  it.  When  the 
mover  was  asked  why,  in  the  cases  he  mentioned,  the  offenders  could  not 
be  punished  for  treasonable  practices,  I  understood  him  to  answer  that,  on 
trials  for  treason  in  the  courts  of  law,  the  testimony  of  two  witnesses  is  re 
quired  ;  but,  if  the  trial  could  be  transferred  to  a  military  tribunal,  the  two 
witnesses  could  be  dispensed  with.  Are  we  now  gravely  to  consider  a 
proposition  of  which  this  is  among  the  professed  objects  ?  The  gentleman 
from  Georgia  (Mr.  Troup)  observed  that,  when  persons  had  been  appre 
hended  for  offences,  they  had  been  rescued  by  habeas  corpus  issued  by  the 
civil  magistrate.  And  are  we  to  deliberate  whether  it  be  not  proper  for 
us  to  prevent  the  delivery  of  the  citizens  of  this  country  from  illegal  ar 
rests  and  imprisonment  by  the  interposition  of  their  great  constitutional 
remedy,  their  writ  of  habeas  corpus  ?  The  Constitution  contains  no  pro 
vision  more  valuable ;  it  makes  no  injunction  more  direct  and  imperative 
than  those  respecting  trials  for  treason,  and  the  benefit  of  the  habeas  corpus. 
Treason  is  not  left  to  be  defined,  even  by  the  highest  courts  of  law.  It 
was  foreseen  that,  in  times  of  commotion,  victims  might  be  sacrificed  to 
constructive  treason ;  that  doctrine  which,  in  other  places  and  in  other 
times,  has  shed  so  much  innocent  blood,  and  which  brought  Algernon 
Sydney  to  the  scaffold.  The  Constitution,  therefore,  defines  treason,  and 
prescribes  the  mode  of  proof.  But  what  is  there  in  the  worst  cases  of  con 
struction  of  treason  that  can  be  compared,  in  point  of  enormity,  to  the 
proposition  now  before  us  ?  This  is  not  to  give  a  latitude  of  construction 
to  the  judge ;  it  is  to  take  the  cause  away  from  the  judge,  and  carry  it  to 
the  camp.  Instead  of  indictment,  arraignment,  and  trial,  it  proposes  the 
summary  process  of  martial  law.  If  the  proposition  should  pass  into  a 
law,  it  takes  away  the  constitutional  definition  of  the  offence ;  it  takes 


120  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  V. 

away  the  prescribed  mode  of  proof;  it  takes  away  the  trial  by  jury; 
it  takes  away  the  civil  tribunal  and  establishes  the  military.  On  a 
resolution  of  this  sort,  I  cannot  believe  the  House  will  consent  to  de 
liberate." 

Mr.  Wright's  resolution  was  referred,  by  the  small  majority 
of  eleven  votes,  and  was  made  the  order  of  the  day  for  the  ensu 
ing  Friday.  But,  after  what  had  occurred,  no  one  ventured  to 
bring  it  up  in  Committee  of  the  Whole,  and  it  was  never  acted 
upon  further.1 

A  little  later,  when  a  bill  to  encourage  enlistments  into  the 
army,  by  giving  very  high  bounties,  was  before  the  House,  Mr. 
Webster  delivered  a  speech  on  the  whole  subject  of  the  war, 
which  was  of  an  exceedingly  elevated  and  commanding  tone.3 

The  first  attempt  at  the  conquest  of  Canada  had  failed. 
Still,  the  invasion  of  Canada  appeared  to  be  an  essential  object 
with  the  Administration  and  a  majority  of  its  supporters  in 
Congress ;  for  an  amendment  offered  to  the  bill,  to  restrict  the 
employment  of  the  troops  to  be  enlisted  to  the  defence  of  our 
own  territory  and  frontiers,  was  rejected  by  a  decisive  vote. 
Mr.  Webster  had,  therefore,  to  address  himself  to  what  he 
deemed  an  erroneous  policy  in  the  conduct  of  the  war,  as  well 
as  to  speak  incidentally  on  its  general  merits.  These  two  topics 
were  inseparably  connected,  because  the  known  differences  of 
opinion  respecting  the  original  expediency  of  the  war,  and  its 
avowed  objects,  pointed  to  the  necessity  for  a  change  in  the 

1 1  observe  with  pain  the  name  of  Mr.  olution  in  order  to  terrify  the  opponents 
Calhoun  among  those  who  voted  for  a  of  the  war.  The  character  of  Judge 
reference  of  this  resolution.  In  any  Ford  was  vouched  for  by  several  of  the 
other  than  a  time  of  high  party  excite-  most  prominent  members  of  the  House, 
ment,  he  could  not  have  been  persuaded  He  was  formerly  of  New  Jersey,  and  was 
to  give  that  vote,  for  he  was  devotedly  now  a  person  of  eminence  in  the  region 
attached  to  the  principles  of  constitu-  where  he  lived,  and  had  written  and 
tional  liberty.  Mr.  Clay  was  in  the  chair,  spoken  a  great  deal  against  the  war. 
As  there  was  a  clear  majority  for  the  res-  Perhaps  the  light  which  he  "  hoisted  in 
olution,  he  was  not  called  upon  to  vote,  his  upper  story  "  was  metaphorical, 
and  did  not.  Among  the  stories  told  at  2  Speech  on  the  Encouragement  of 
that  time  and  repeated  in  this  debate,  it  Enlistments,  January  14,  1814.  The 
was  said  that  Judge  Ford,  living  some-  speech  is  very  well  reported  in  the  An- 
where  near  the  St.  Lawrence,  had,  when  nals  of  Congress.  (Thirteenth  Congress, 
General  Wilkinson's  army  was  descend-  vol.  i.,  pp.  940  et  seq.)  It  was  not  a  pre- 
ing  that  river,  hoisted  a  light  in  his  up-  pared  speech,  but  this  report  was  cor- 
per  story,  which  gave  the  British  infor-  rected  by  Mr.  Webster.  He  had  no  in- 
mation,  and  that  Wilkinson's  army  was  tention  of  speaking  until  nine  o'clock 
soon  fired  upon  from  the  Canada  shore,  that  morning,  and  he  addressed  the 
Such  tales  found  a  ready  credence  with  House  at  two.  (Correspondence,  i.,  p. 
some  of  the  Administration  members,  239 ;  letter  to  his  brother  Ezekiel  Web- 
while  others  probably  voted  for  the  res-  ster.) 


1814.]  OPPOSITION  TO  THE  WAR.  121 

policy  which  had  hitherto  governed  its  prosecution.  Of  the 
large  circumspection  with  which  a  question  of  war  should  be 
approached  by  the  Government  of  this  Union,  Mr.  "Webster 
spoke  in  terms  that  can  never  lose  their  importance  while  that 
Government  remains  what  it  is : 

"  We  are  told  that  our  opposition  has  divided  the  Government  and 
divided  the  country.  Remember,  sir,  the  state  of  the  Government  and  of 
the  country  when  war  was  declared.  Did  not  difference  of  opinion  then 
exist  ?  Do  we  not  know  that  this  House  was  divided  ?  Do  we  not  know 
that  the  other  House  was  still  more  divided  ?  Does  not  every  man,  to  whom 
the  public  documents  were  accessible,  know,  that  in  that  House  one  single 
vote,  if  given  otherwise  than  it  was,  would  have  rejected  the  act  declaring 
war,  and  adopted  a  different  course  of  measures  ?  A  parental,  guardian 
government  would  have  regarded  that  state  of  things.  It  would  have 
weighed  such  considerations ;  it  would  have  inquired  coolly  and  dispas 
sionately  into  the  state  of  public  opinion  in  the  States  of  this  confeder 
acy  ;  it  would  have  looked  especially  to  those  States  most  concerned  in 
the  professed  objects  of  the  war,  and  whose  interests  were  to  be  most 
deeply  affected  by  it.  Such  a  government,  knowing  that  its  strength  con 
sisted  in  the  union  of  opinion  among  the  people,  would  have  taken  no 
step  of  such  importance  without  that  union ;  nor  would  it  have  mistaken 
mere  party  feeling  for  national  sentiment. 

"  That  occasion,  sir,  called  for  a  liberal  view  of  things.  Not  only  the 
degree  of  union  in  the  sentiments  of  the  people,  but  the  nature  and  struc 
ture  of  the  Government ;  the  general  habits  and  pursuits  of  the  community ; 
the  probable  consequences  of  the  war,  immediate  and  remote,  on  our  civil 
institutions ;  the  effect  of  a  vast  military  patronage ;  the  variety  of  impor 
tant  local  interests  and  objects — these  were  considerations  essentially  be 
longing  to  the  subject.  It  was  not  enough  that  Government  could  make 
out  its  cause  of  war  on  paper,  and  get  the  better  of  England  in  the  argu 
ment.  This  was  requisite,  but  not  all  that  was  requisite.  The  question 
of  war  or  peace,  in  a  country  like  this,  is  not  to  be  compressed  into  the 
compass  that  would  fit  a  small  litigation.  Incapable,  in  its  nature,  of 
being  decided  upon  technical  rules,  it  is  unfit  to  be  discussed  in  the  man 
ner  which  usually  appertains  to  the  forensic  habit.  It  should  be  regarded 
as  a  great  question,  not  only  of  right,  but  also  of  prudence  and  expediency. 
Eeasons  of  a  general  nature,  considerations  which  go  back  to  the  origin  of 
our  institutions,  and  other  considerations  which  look  forward  to  our  hope 
ful  progress  in  future  times,  all  belong,  in  their  just  proportions  and  gra 
dations,  to  a  question,  in  the  determination  of  which  the  happiness  of  the 
present  and  of  future  generations  may  be  so  much  concerned.  I  have 
heard  no  satisfactory  vindication  of  the  war  on  grounds  like  these.  They 
appear  not  to  have  suited  the  temper  of  that  time.  Utterly  astonished  at 
the  declaration  of  war,  I  have  been  surprised  at  nothing  since.  Unless  all 


122  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  V. 

history  deceived  me,  I  saw  how  it  would  be  prosecuted  when  I  saw  how  it 
was  begun.  There  is  in  the  nature  of  things  an  unchangeable  relation  be 
tween  rash  counsels  and  feeble  execution. 

"  It  was  not,  sir,  the  minority  that  brought  on  the  war.  Look  to  your 
records  from  the  date  of  the  Embargo  in  1807  until  June,  1812.  Every 
thing  that  men  could  do  they  did  to  stay  your  course.  When  at  last  they 
could  effect  no  more,  they  urged  you  to  delay  your  measures.  They  en 
treated  you  to  give  yet  a  little  time  for  deliberation,  and  to  wait  for  favor 
able  events.  As  if  inspired  for  the  purpose  of  arresting  your  progress, 
they  laid  before  you  the  consequences  of  your  measures,  just  as  we  have 
seen  them  since  take  place.  They  predicted  to  you  their  effects  on  public 
opinion.  They  told  you  that,  instead  of  healing,  they  would  inflame  po 
litical  dissensions.  They  pointed  out  to  you  also  what  would  and  what 
must  happen  on  the  frontier.  That  which  since  has  happened  is  but  their 
prediction  turned  into  history.  Vain  is  the  hope,  then,  of  escaping  just 
retribution,  by  imputing  to  the  minority  of  the  Government,  or  to  the 
opposition  among  the  people,  the  disasters  of  these  times.  Vain  is  the 
attempt  to  impose  thus  on  the  common  sense  of  mankind.  The  world 
has  had  too  much  experience  of  ministerial  shifts  and  evasions.  It  has 
learned  to  judge  of  men  by  their  actions,  and  of  measures  by  their  con 
sequences." 

Recurring  to  the  imputations  cast  upon  the  opposition — im 
putations  to  which  an  opposition  is  commonly  subjected — he 
asserted  the  duty  and  the  right  of  free  discussion  in  a  manner 
equally  worthy  of  being  remembered  at  all  times  and  under  all 
circumstances : 

"  If  the  purpose  be,  by  casting  these  imputations  upon  those  who  are 
opposed  to  the  policy  of  the  Government,  to  check  the  freedom  of  inquiry, 
discussion,  and  debate,  such  purpose  is  also  incapable  of  being  executed. 
That  opposition  is  constitutional  and  legal.  It  is  also  conscientious.  It 
rests  in  settled  and  sober  conviction  that  such  policy  is  destructive  to  the 
interests  of  the  people,  and  dangerous  to  the  being  of  the  Government. 
The  experience  of  every  day  confirms  these  sentiments.  Men  who  act  from 
such  motives  are  not  to  be  discouraged  by  trifling  obstacles,  nor  awed  by 
any  dangers.  They  know  the  limit  of  constitutional  opposition — up  to 
that  limit,  at  their  own  discretion,  will  they  walk,  and  walk  fearlessly.  If 
they  should  find,  in  the  history  of  their  country,  a  precedent  for  going 
over,  I  trust  they  will  not  follow  it.  They  are  not  of  a  school  in  which  in 
surrection  is  taught  as  a  virtue.  They  will  not  seek  promotion  through 
the  paths  of  sedition,  nor  qualify  themselves  to  serve  their  country  in  any 
of  the  higher  departments  of  its  Government  by  making  rebellion  the  first 
element  in  their  political  science. 

"  Important  as  I  deem  it  to  discuss,  on  all  proper  occasions,  the  policy 
of  the  measures  at  present  pursued,  it  is  still  more  important  to  maintain 


1814.]  RIGHTS  OF  DISCUSSION.  123 

the  right  of  such  discussion  in  its  full  and  just  extent.  Sentiments  lately 
sprung  up,  and  now  growing  fashionable,  make  it  necessary  to  be  explicit 
on  this  point.  The  more  I  perceive  a  disposition  to  check  the  freedom  of 
inquiry  by  extravagant  and  unconstitutional  pretences,  the  firmer  shall  be 
the  tone  in  which  I  shall  assert  and  the  freer  the  manner  in  which  I  shall 
exercise  it.  It  is  the  ancient  and  undoubted  prerogative  of  this  people  to 
canvass  public  measures  and  the  merits  of  public  men.  It  is  a  '  home-bred 
right,'  a  fireside  privilege.  It  has  ever  bee^n  enjoyed  in  every  house,  cot 
tage,  and  cabin  in  the  nation.  It  is  not  to  be  drawn  into  controversy.  It 
is  as  undoubted  as  the  right  of  breathing  the  air,  or  walking  on  the  earth. 
Belonging  to  private  life  as  a  right,  it  belongs  to  public  life  as  a  duty ;  and 
it  is  the  last  duty  which  those  whose  representative  I  am  shall  find  me  to 
abandon.  Aiming  at  all  times  to  be  courteous  and  temperate  in  its  use, 
except  when  the  right  itself  shall  be  questioned,  I  shall  then  carry  it  to  its 
extent.  I  shall  then  place  myself  on  the  extreme  boundary  of  my  right, 
and  bid  defiance  to  any  arm  that  would  move  me  from  my  ground.  This 
high  constitutional  privilege  I  shall  defend  and  exercise  within  this  House 
and  without  this  House,  and  in  all  places,  in  time  of  war,  in  time  of  peace, 
and  at  all  times." 

Passing,  then,  to  the  futility  of  all  projects  for  the  conquest 
of  the  neighboring  British  provinces,  he  proceeded  to  the 
connection  between  the  avowed  object  of  the  war — the  defence 
of  our  maritime  rights — and  the  great  purpose  for  which  the 
Government  had  been  created,  the  protection  and  encour 
agement  of  commerce.  This  purpose,  he  argued,  is  defeated  by 
every  measure  of  embargo  and  restriction,  and  can  be  answered 
in  a  time  of  war  only  by  coping  with  the  enemy  on  the  ocean. 
The  speech  was  closed  with  an  impressive  appeal  to  the  House 
for  a  change  in  the  mode  of  carrying  on  the  war,  and  with  an 
explicit  declaration  of  his  own  purpose  to  support  measures 
which  he  could  approve,  and  such  measures  only : 

"  The  faith  of  this  nation  is  pledged  to  its  commerce,  formally  and 
solemnly.  I  call  upon  you  to  redeem  that  pledge,  not  by  sacrificing  while 
you  profess  to  regard  it,  but  by  unshackling  it,  and  protecting  it,  and 
fostering  it,  according  to  your  ability,  and  the  reasonable  expectations  of 
those  who  have  committed  it  to  the  care  of  the  Government.  In  the  com 
merce  of  the  country  the  Constitution  had  its  growth ;  in  the  extinction 
of  that  commerce  it  will  find  its  grave.  I  use  not  the  tone  of  intimidation 
or  menace,  but  I  forewarn  you  of  consequences.  Let  it  be  remembered 
that,  in  my  place,  this  day,  and  in  the  discharge  of  my  public  duty,  I  con 
jure  you  to  alter  your  course.  I  urge  to  you  the  language  of  entreaty.  I 
beseech  you  by  the  best  hopes  of  your  country's  prosperity,  by  your  regard 
for  the  preservation  of  her  Government  and  her  Union,  by  your  own  ambi- 


124  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  V. 

tion,  as  honorable  men,  of  leading  hereafter  in  the  councils  of  a  great  and 
growing  empire ;  I  conjure  you,  by  every  motive  which  can  be  addressed 
to  the  mind,  that  you  abandon  your  system  of  restrictions — that  you 
abandon  it  at  once,  and  forever. 

"  The  humble  aid  which  it  would  be  in  my  power  to  render  to  meas 
ures  of  Government  shall  be  given  cheerfully,  if  Government  will  pursue 
measures  which  I  can  conscientiously  support.    Badly  as  I  think  of  the 
original  grounds  of  the  war,  as  well  as  of  the  manner  in  which  it  has 
been  hitherto  conducted,  if,  even  now,  failing  in  an  honest  and  sincere 
attempt  to  procure  just  and  honorable  peace,  it  will  return  to  measures  of 
defence  and  protection,  such  as  reason  and  common  sense  and  the  public 
opinion  all  call  for,  my  vote  shall  not  be  withholden  from  the  means.   Give 
up  your  futile  projects  of  invasion.    Extinguish  the  fires  that  blaze  on 
your  inland  frontier.    Establish  perfect  safety  and  defence  there  by  ade 
quate  force.     Let  every  man  that  sleeps  on  your  soil  sleep  in  security. 
Stop  the  blood  that  flows  from  the  veins  of  unarmed  yeomanry  and 
women  and  children.     Give  to  the  living  time  to  bury  and  lament  their 
dead  in  the  quietness  of  private  sorrow.      Having  performed  this  work 
of  beneficence  and  mercy  on  your  inland  border,  turn,  and  look  with  the 
eye  of  justice  and  compassion  on  your  vast  population  along  the  coast. 
Unclinch  the  iron  grasp  of  your  Embargo.    Take  measures  for  that  end 
before  another  sun  sets  upon  you.    With  all  the  war  of  the  enemy  on 
your  commerce,  if  you  would  cease  to  war  on  it  yourselves,  you  would 
still  have  some  commerce.    That  commerce  would  give  you  some  revenue. 
Apply  that  revenue  to  the  augmentation  of  your  navy.    That  navy  will, 
in  turn,  protect  your  commerce.    Let  it  no  longer  be  said  that  not  one 
ship  of  force,  built  by  your  hands,  yet  floats  upon  the  ocean.    Turn  the 
current  of  your  efforts  into  the  channel  which  national  sentiment  has 
already  worn  broad  and  deep  to  receive  it.    A  naval  force,  competent  to 
defend  your  coast  against  considerable  armaments,  to  convoy  your  trade, 
and  perhaps  raise  the  blockade  of  your  rivers,  is  not  a  chimera.    It  may  be 
realized.    If,  then,  the  war  must  be  continued,  go  to  the  ocean.    If  you 
are  seriously  contending  for  maritime  rights,  go  to  the  theatre  where 
alone  those  rights  can  be  defended.    Thither  every  indication  of  your  for 
tune  points  you.    There  the  united  wishes  and  exertions  of  the  nation 
will  go  with  you.     Even  our  party  divisions,  acrimonious  as  they  are, 
cease  at  the  water's  edge.    They  are  lost  in  attachment  to  national  char 
acter  on  the  element  where  that  character  is  made  respectable.    In  pro 
tecting  naval  interests  by  naval  means,  you  will  arm  yourselves  with  the 
whole  power  of  national  sentiment,  and  may  command  the  whole  abun 
dance  of  the  national  resources.    In  time  you  may  enable  yourselves  to 
redress  injuries  in  the  place  where  they  may  be  offered;  and,  if  need  be, 
to  accompany  your  own  flag  throughout  the  world  with  the  protection 
of  your  own  cannon." 

In  thus  calling  upon  the  Administration  to  abandon  the 


1814.]  THE  EMBARGO  MODIFIED.  125 

system  of  commercial  restrictions,  and  to  go  to  the  ocean  as  the 
proper  theatre  of  the  war,  Mr.  "Webster  made  it  manifest  that 
no  half-way  measures  could  receive  his  support.  In  a  very 
short  time  the  Administration  found  it  necessary  to  introduce 
a  proposition  to  modify  the  Embargo  ;  and  the  vote  given  upon 
it  by  Mr.  Webster  affords  a  remarkable  illustration  of  the  fidelity 
and  consistency  with  which  he  always  adhered  to  his  convictions 
respecting  the  limits  of  constitutional  powers.  He  never  at  any 
time  in  his  life  believed  that  an  embargo,  unlimited  in  dura 
tion,  and  capable  of  being  removed  only  by  an  act  of  Congress 
assented  to  by  the  whole  legislative  power,  is  authorized  by  the 
Constitution.  The  existing  Embargo,  enacted  on  the  17th  of 
December,  1813,  was  not  exactly  of  this  character,  like  that  of 
1807 ;  but  it  embraced  the  whole  coasting  as  well  as  the  whole 
foreign  trade  of  the  United  States.  The  consequence  was,  that 
there  could  be  no  commerce  by  water  between  different  States, 
or  between  different  ports  of  the  same  State.  In  the  course  of 
the  winter,  a  population  of  seven  thousand  persons,  on  the 
island  of  Nantucket,  were  in  great  extremities  for  want  of  the 
necessaries  of  life.  This  island,  belonging  to  Massachusetts, 
fifteen  miles  long,  and  three  miles  wide,  and  thirty  miles  from 
the  main-land,  afforded  no  fuel,  and  produced  scarcely  any  pro 
visions.  The  inhabitants  had  been  engaged  in  the  whale-fish 
ery  ever  since  its  first  settlement,  and  had  always  depended 
for  their  supplies  upon  the  nearest  towns  on  the  coast.  Thirty 
of  its  principal  citizens  were  now  in  the  town  of  New  Bedford, 
unable,  in  consequence  of  the  Embargo,  to  reach  their  families. 
This  perilous  state  of  things,  of  which  it  can  only  be  said  that 
it  was  not  (although  it  should  have  been)  foreseen,  required 
special  relief.  A  bill  was  introduced  to  authorize  the  Presi 
dent  to  grant  to  the  people  of  Nantucket  certain  privileges  of 
commerce  with  the  main-land  during  the  existence  of  the  Em 
bargo.  Mr.  Webster  voted  against  it,  because  he  considered 
that  part  of  the  Embargo  which  interdicted  the  coasting  trade 
as  unconstitutional  and  void.  He  never  would  consent,  he  said, 
to  pass  any  law,  giving  to  our  citizens  a  privilege  which  they 
enjoyed  under  the  Constitution,  and  of  which  they  could  not 
be  rightfully  divested.  Seven  other  members  voted  with  him 
upon  the  same  ground ;  all  the  other  members  voting  for  the  bill. 


126  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  Y. 

But,  before  the  end  of  the  session,  and  in  less  than  three 
months  from  this  modification  of  the  Embargo,  Mr.  "Webster 
had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  Administration  change  its 
whole  course  on  this  subject,  and  of  taking  part  in  what  he 
styled  "  the  funeral  ceremonies  of  the  restrictive  system."  The 
Embargo  of  December,  1813,  had  been  passed  on  the  recom 
mendation  of  President  Madison,  upon  the  ground  that  sup 
plies  found  their  way  to  the  enemy  from  our  own  ports,  and 
that  British  productions  were  brought  intp  the  United  States 
from  neutral  countries,  and  even  in  British  vessels  disguised  as 
neutrals.  But  the  experience  of  only  four  months  demonstrated 
the  entire  uselessness,  as  a  war  measure,  of  placing  our  whole 
commerce  in  a  condition  of  paralysis,  and  also  demonstrated 
its  direct  effect  of  depriving  the  Government  of  revenue.  The 
President  now  recommended  a  repeal  of  the  Embargo.  Mr. 
Calhoun,  who  led  for  the  Administration  on  the  floor  of  the 
House,  as  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations, 
undertook  the  duty  of  explaining  the  reasons  for  this  change 
of  policy.  His  part  was  a  difficult  one  to  perform ;  for  the 
opponents  of  the  Embargo  had  from  the  first,  and  as  often  as  it 
was  renewed,  pointed  out  the  consequences  which  had  always 
attended  it.  But  Mr.  Calhoun  proceeded  in  his  task  with  great 
skill  and  address.  He  frankly  admitted  that,  in  his  own  opin 
ion,  the  Embargo  was  originally  fitted  to  produce  an  effect  on 
the  conduct  of  the  belligerent  nations  of  Europe  toward  our 
selves,  so  long  only  as  we  remained  actually  at  peace  with  them ; 
and  that  it  ought  to  have  been  abandoned  when  we  went  to  war 
with  England.  This  admission  of  its  futility,  as  a  measure  of 
war,  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  find,  in  the  condition  of 
things  in  Europe,  when  the  Embargo  was  laid,  and  in  the 
changes  which  had  since  taken  place  in  Europe,  both  a  justifi 
cation  for  laying  it,  and  a  reason  for  now  abandoning  it.  In 
order  to  find  the  former,  he  went  back  to  the  state  of  Europe 
in  1807,  when  we  first  began  the  restrictive  system  under  Mr. 
Jefferson,  and  when,  all  the  European  powers  being  arrayed 
against  England,  there  was  no  nation  but  ourselves  interested 
in  the  support  or  defence  of  neutral  rights.  As  there  was  then 
no  prospect  of  producing  any  impression  by  it  on  neutral 
powers — there  being  no  neutrals — and  as  Great  Britain  might 


1814.]  REPEAL  OF  THE  EMBARGO. 

be  made  to  feel  its  effects,  it  was,  lie  argued,  as  a  means  of  pre 
venting  a  war  with  her,  a  wise  and  proper  measure.  Then, 
inserting  gracefully  the  admission  that,  as  a  war  measure,  the 
restrictive  system,  in  his  own  opinion,  might  have  been  aban 
doned  earlier,  he  proceeded  at  once  to  the  state  of  things  now 
existing  in  Europe,  in  which  there  were  many  nations  of  great 
power  in  a  neutral  condition,  or  acting  with  England  against 
France,  interested,  like  ourselves,  in  the  restoration  of  neutral 
rights,  with  whom  it  was  now  our  best  policy  to  open  com 
mercial  intercourse.  He  dwelt  particularly  on  the  impor 
tance  of  cultivating  the  good-will  of  the  Emperor  of  Kussia, 
who,  being  now  the  ally  of  England,  would  have  an  im 
portant  influence  in  inducing  her  to  bring  her  war  with 
us  to  a  termination,  in  which  our  objects,  of  reestablishing 
neutral  rights  and  the  freedom  of  the  seas,  would  be  accom 
plished. 

There  are  few  specimens  of  parliamentary  tact,  on  the 
records  of  any  deliberative  assembly,  more  ingenious  than  this 
speech  of  Mr.  Calhoun  in  favor  of  repealing  the  Embargo  of 
December,  1813.  But  he  forgot,  perhaps  he  wished  to  forget, 
that  it  was  the  Embargo  of  December,  1813,  which  he  was 
about  to  repeal.  He  forgot  that  the  very  assertion  of  the  Pres 
ident,  when  he  recommended  this  as  a  war  measure,  was,  that 
there  were  neutral  nations,  under  whose  flag  and  through 
whose  ports  an  indirect  commerce  between  Great  Britain  and 
ourselves  was  then  alleged  to  be  going  on,  which  weakened  us 
and  strengthened  her  as  belligerents,  and  which  must  therefore 
be  suppressed,  at  whatever  expense  to  those  neutral  nations. 
All  that  Mr.  Calhoun  said,  respecting  the  importance  of  concil 
iating  and  helping  the  nations  that  were  neutrals,  in  April,  1814, 
when  he  proposed  the  repeal,  was  true  and  sound ;  but  it  was 
just  as  true  and  sound  in  December,  1813,  when  this  Embargo 
was  laid.  Moreover,  Bonaparte  had  been  driven  out  of  Russia 
in  the  winter  of  1812-'13 ;  and  when  we  laid  this  particular 
Embargo  of  December,  1813,  putting  an  end  to  all  lawful  com 
merce  with  all  nations,  a  large  part  of  Northern  Europe  was 
preparing  to  combine  against  him,  and  their  territories  could 
no  longer  be  used  by  him  as  the  sphere  of  his  own  restrictive 
policy. 


128  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  V. 

"When,  therefore,  Mr.  "Webster  rose  to  answer  Mr.  Calhoun, 
it  was  quite  natural  that  he  should  congratulate  his  friends  on 
the  approaching  triumph  of  their  principles,  and  that  he  should 
claim  the  vote  about  to  be  given  as  a  high  tribute  to  the  cor 
rectness  of  their  opinions  and  the  consistency  of  their  conduct. 
Accepting  the  issue  tendered  by  Mr.  Calhoun  in  going  back  to 
the  origin  of  the  restrictive  system  of  embargoes  and  non-inter 
course,  Mr.  Webster  proceeded  to  say  that  it  was  originally 
offered  to  the  people  of  this  country  as  a  kind  of  political  faith  ; 
to  be  believed  in,  but  not  examined ;  to  be  acted  upon,  and  not 
reasoned  about.  To  deliberate  on  it  was  to  doubt ;  and  to 
doubt  was  heretical.  It  stood  upon  the  trust  reposed  in  its 
authors,  not  upon  any  merit  which  could  be  discovered  in 
itself.  It  had  been  from  the  beginning  a  kind  of  party  super 
stition,  and,  as  such,  it  had  been  adhered  to,  as  a  measure  of 
war,  although  it  was  now  admitted  that  it  was  unfitted  for  such 
a  purpose. 

He  then  stated  with  much  force  the  fundamental  objection 
to  this  system  that  had  always  been  urged  against  it  by  its 
opponents,  that  its  measures  were  ruinous  to  ourselves,  that 
they  were  inoperative  on  others,  and  that  they  did  not  spring 
from  a  purely  American  policy.  It  was  an  imitation  of  the 
Continental  system  of  France,  and  was,  in  fact,  a  means  of 
cooperation  with  her  in  her  conflict  with  England.  The  com 
mencement  of  the  Continental  system  of  restriction  followed 
immediately  on  the  subjugation  of  Prussia,  and  the  humilia 
tion  of  Russia ; l  and  our  Embargo  of  1807  came  in,  and  con 
tributed  all  that  we  could  contribute  to  make  that  system 
effectual.  It  was  now  clear  that  our  restrictive  policy  depended 
for  its  success  on  another  and  a  mightier  system.  Incapable 
itself  of  directly  producing  any  great  effect  on  the  interest  of 
England,  it  might  yet  contribute  to  that  end  by  its  cooperation 
with  her  European  enemy.  It  was  now  admitted  that  it  must 
fall,  because  great  changes  had  taken  place.  Those  changes, 
Mr.  Webster  said,  were  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  over 
throw  of  French  power,  and  the  deliverance  of  nations  long 
oppressed  by  its  despotic  spirit.  How  unnatural,  he  continued, 

1  At  the  decisive  battle  of  Austerlitz,    tory  enabled    Napoleon   to  extort  the 
December  2,  1805,  in  which  a  great  vie-    treaty  of  Presburg. 


1814.]  GRAND  ERROR   OF   THE   RESTRICTIVE   SYSTEM.  129 

how  perverse,  how  radically  false  must  be  a  system  of  measures 
which  has  opposed  our  interests  to  the  general  interests  of  man 
kind,  and  reduced  us  to  that  miserable  condition  that,  unless  we 
would  wish  to  see  our  own  Government  disconcerted,  and  its 
hopes  disappointed,  we  must  rejoice,  not  in  the  general  liberty 
and  prosperity  of  nations,  but  in  the  progress  of  successful 
usurpation  ! 1  Even  without  regard  to  the  character  of  the 
Government  with  which  this  system  was  uniting  us,  it  was,  in 
its  own  nature,  radically  wrong  and  reprehensible  ;  for  it  had  a 
direct  tendency  to  diminish  our  own  independence  and  self- 
respect,  and  to  make  us  rely  on  the  efforts  and  success  of  others 
for  the  maintenance  of  our  own  rights.  If  it  had  been  seen,  at 
its  first  introduction,  as  was  now  impliedly  admitted,  that  it 
depended  for  its  success  on  the  condition  of  European  politics, 
that  it  owed  its  support  to  the  continuance  of  French  power 
over  the  Continent,  and  that,  with  any  considerable  diminu 
tion  of  that  power,  it  would  become  futile  and  contempt 
ible — the  people  of  this  country,  he  declared,  from  a  senti 
ment  of  national  independence,  would  have  rejected  it  with 
scorn. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  motives  with  which  our 
restrictive  system  was  originally  adopted,  it  must  be  allowed,. 
I  think,  that  Mr.  Calhoun  had  laid  open  the  ground  for  this  re 
tort,  and  that  Mr.  Webster  assigned  the  true  character  to  its 
tendencies  and  the  true  objections  to  it  that  had  always  existed. 
Down  to  the  latest  moment,  it  had  constantly  been  maintained 
by  the  supporters  of  the  present  and  the  preceding  Administra 
tion,  that  the  continuance  of  this  system  did  not  depend  on 
events  in  Europe ;  that  to  refer  to  them  was  uncharitable  and 
unjust ;  and  that  the  system  must  be  adhered  to,  now  that  we 
were  at  war.  "  But  now,"  said  Mr.  Webster,  "  in  a  moment, 
in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  the  whole  system  is  dissolved ;  and 
all  its  crowds  of  laws  and  supplements,  and  its  garniture  of 

1  In  that  heroic  address,  issued  by  the  nation  which,  after  having  patiently 

the  Emperor  Alexander   to  his  people,  endured  all  the  evils  of  war,  shall  suc- 

announcing  the  capture  of  Moscow  by  the  ceed,  by  the  force  of  courage  and  virtue, 

French,  there  was  a  prophetic  sentiment  not  only  in  reconquering  its  own  rights, 

which  foretold  the  deliverance  of  Europe  but  in  extending  the  blessings  of  free- 

tli rough  the  sufferings  of  Russia  :    "  In  dom  to  other  states  ;  and  even  to  those 

the  present  miserable  state  of  the  human  who  have  been  made  the  unwilling  in- 

race,"  said  the  Czar,  "  what  glory  awaits  -  struments  of  attempting  its  subjection  ! " 
10 


130  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  V. 

messages,  reports,  and  resolutions  of  public  bodies,  are  tumbling 
undistinguished  into  a  common  grave." 

This  animated  but  perfectly  courteous  discussion  was  con 
tinued  by  a  reply  from  Mr.  Calhoun  and  a  rejoinder  from  Mr. 
Webster,  the  former  contending  that  the  war  and  the  restrictive 
system  were  both  means  to  the  same  end — the  coercion  of  Eng 
land  into  a  disposition  to  respect  the  rights  of  neutrals ;  that 
whether  one  or  the  other  was  to  be  pursued  was  a  matter  of 
election,  to  be  decided  by  a  sound  discretion.  He  repelled  the 
idea  that  the  House  or  the  Government  had  cooperated  in  the 
views  of  France,  and  trusted  that  Mr.  Webster  would  believe 
that,  as  honorable  men,  his  opponents  meant  to  stand  on  Amer 
ican  ground.  Mr.  Webster  said  that  he  had  made  no  observa 
tions  respecting  motives ;  that  he  had  pointed  out  the  necessary 
tendencies  of  the  system;  that  we  should  have  asserted  our 
rights  by  our  own  strength,  and  not,  even  for  the  purpose  of 
effecting  a  great  object,  have  resorted  to  a  course  of  measures 
dependent  for  their  success  on  foreign  events,  which  had  made 
our  policy  so  vacillating  that  our  statutes  "  frowned  at  each 
other  on  the  record  in  the  most  positive  spirit  of  contradiction." 

The  bill  for  repealing  the  Embargo  and  the  Non-Intercourse 
Acts  was  then  passed  by  a  very  large  majority.1 

This  debate  was  also  marked  by  an  interesting  feature  that 
exhibits  the  then  relative  positions  of  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr. 
Webster  on  the  subject  of  protection  to  domestic  manufactures. 
The  tariff  that  was  at  that  time  in  operation  as  a  war  tariff  was 
a  system  of  double  duties ;  the  duties  having  been  raised  to  twice 
their  former  standard  for  the  sake  of  more  revenue.  But,  as 
they  were  arranged,  they  had  no  special  reference  to  the  pro 
tection  of  our  own  manufactures.  The  Embargo  and  Non- 
Intercourse  laws,  however,  had  of  course  operated  as  a  system 
of  very  efficient  protection ;  and,  now  that  they  were  to  be  re 
pealed,  great  anxiety  was  felt  as  to  the  effect  of  that  repeal  on 
our  manufactures.  On  the  day  previous  to  this  debate  on  the 
restrictive  system,  the  House  had  adopted  a  resolution  directing 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  report  to  Congress,  at  its  next 
session,  a  general  tariff  of  duties,  conformably  to  what  might 
then  be  the  situation  of  the  general  and  local  interests  of  the 

1  April  7,  1814. 


1814.]  PROTECTION  IN   1814.  131 

United  States.  In  his  speech  introducing  the  bill  to  repeal  the 
Embargo,  Mr.  Calhoun  had  said,  in  reference  to  the  fears  of  the 
manufacturing  interests,  that  this  resolution  was  a  strong  pledge 
that  the  House  would  not  suffer  the  manufacturers  to  be  unpro 
tected  in  case  of  a  repeal  of  the  restrictive  system ;  and  that  he 
himself  hoped  that  at  all  times  and  under  every  policy  they 
would  be  protected  with  due  care.  Mr.  Webster,  in  reply  to 
this,  said  that  with  respect  to  manufactures  it  was  necessary  to 
speak  with  some  precision.  He  was  not  their  enemy ;  he  was 
their  friend,  but  he  was  not  for  rearing  them,  or  any  other  in 
terest,  in  hot-beds.  He  would  not  legislate  precipitately,  even 
in  favor  of  them ;  above  all,  he  would  not  profess  intentions  in 
relation  to  them  which  he  did  not  purpose  to  execute.  He  felt 
no  desire  to  push  capital  into  extensive  manufactures  faster 
than  the  general  progress  of  our  wealth  and  population  propels 
it.  After  adding  some  general  remarks  on  the  character  and 
effects  of  great  manufacturing  towns,  as  contrasted  with  the  in 
fluences  of  agricultural  pursuits,  he  closed  this  part  of  the  dis 
cussion  as  follows : 

"  I  have  made  these  remarks,  sir,  not  because  I  perceive  any  immediate 
danger  of  carrying  our  manufactures  to  an  extensive  height,  brat  for  the 
purpose  of  guarding  and  limiting  my  opinions,  and  of  checking,  perhaps, 
a  little  the  high- wrought  hopes  of  some  who  seem  to  look  to  our  present 
infant  establishments  for  '  more  than  their  nature  or  their  state  can  bear.' 
It  is  the  true  policy  of  government  to  suffer  the  different  pursuits  of  society 
to  take  their  own  course,  and  not  to  give  excessive  bounties  or  encourage 
ments  to  one  over  another.  This,  also,  is  the  true  spirit  of  the  Constitu 
tion.  It  has  not,  in  my  opinion,  conferred  on  the  Government  the  power 
of  changing  the  occupations  of  the  people  of  different  States  and  sections, 
and  of  forcing  them  into  other  employments.  It  cannot  prohibit  com 
merce  any  more  than  agriculture,  nor  manufactures  any  more  than  com 
merce.  It  owes  protection  to  all.  I  rejoice  that  commerce  is  once  more 
permitted  to  exist ;  that  its  remnant,  as  far  as  this  unblessed  war  will 
allow,  may  yet  again  visit  the  seas,  before  it  is  quite  forgotten  that  we 
have  been  a  commercial  people.  I  shall  rejoice  still  further  when  I  see 
the  Government  pursue  an  independent,  permanent,  and  steady  system  of 
national  politics ;  when  it  shall  rely  for  the  maintenance  of  rights  and  the 
redress  of  wrongs  on  the  strength  and  resources  of  our  own  country,  and 
break  off  all  measures  which  tend,  in  any  degree,  to  connect  us  with  the 
fortunes  of  a  foreign  power." 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  this  was  said  in  1814, 


132  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  Y. 

when  no  "  hot-bed "  system  had  been,  if  such  was  afterward, 
resorted  to. 

This  session  of  Congress  ended  on  the  18th  of  April,  1814. 
It  was  during  this  winter  that  Mr.  Webster  began  that  long 
course  of  practice  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
which  was  seldom  entirely  interrupted  from  that  time  forward, 
although  there  came  to  be  periods  when  his  public  and  official 
duties  obliged  him  to  make  great  sacrifices  in  respect  to  his  pro 
fessional  emoluments.  At  this  period  the  court  commenced  its 
sessions  in  the  month  of  February.  Its  term  in  the  present 
year  was  closed  about  the  middle  of  March.  Mr.  Webster  was 
employed  in  several  prize  cases,  none  of  which,  however,  in 
volved  very  important  questions.1  We  get  the  following  item 
of  interest  from  his  correspondence  with  his  brother  :  "  There  is 
no  man  in  the  court  that  strikes  me  like  Marshall.  I  have 
never  seen  a  man  of  whose  intellect  I  had  a  higher  opinion." ! 
After  the  adjournment  of  the  court,  Mr.  Webster  went  with  a 
few  other  gentlemen  to  dine  with  Judge  Washington,  at  Mount 
Yernon.8 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  244.  gress.     He  became  a  member  of  the 

2  For  some  very  interesting  descrip-    court  in  1811. 

tions  of  the  other  judges  of  that  time,  as  8  Letter  to  E.  Webster. — ( Correspond- 
well  as  of  the  Chief  Justice,  see  the  let-  ence,  i.,  244.)  There  is  an  error  in  the 
ters  of  Judge  Story,  given  in  his  life  by  date  of  this  letter  in  the  printed  copy, 
his  son,  Mr.  W.  W.  Story,  vol.  i.,  pp.  It  should  be  March  29,  1814,  instead  of 
166,  et  seq.  These  letters  were  written  May.  Mr.  Webster  was  not  in  Wash- 
before  Judge  Story  was  on  the  bench,  ington  after  the  end  of  the  session  of 
and  while  he  was  a  member  of  Con-  Congress. 


18H.]  BURNING  OF  THE  CAPITOL.  133 


OHAPTEK   VI. 
1814-1815. 

EXTRAORDINARY  SESSION  OF  CONGRESS  —  BURNING  OF  THE  CAPITOL 
BY  THE  ENGLISH  -  PEACE  NEGOTIATIONS  -  THE  HARTFORD  CON 
VENTION  —  A  LAND  TAX  —  CONSCRIPTION  -  ATTEMPT  TO  CREATE  A 
NATIONAL  BANK. 


Thirteenth  Congress  was  assembled  by  proclamation 
of  the  President  in  an  extraordinary  session,  on  the  19th 
of  September,  1814.  Grave  events  had  occurred.  In  the  pre 
ceding  August,  the  enemy  had  landed  a  force  fifty  miles  below 
Washington,  which  marched  to  the  city,  burned  the  capitol, 
the  President's  house,  and  some  of  the  other  public  build 
ings,  and  then  retired.  The  President's  message,  at  the  open 
ing  of  the  session,  took  notice  of  this  "  destruction  of  public 
edifices,  protected,  as  monuments  of  the  arts,  by  the  laws  of 
civilized  warfare  ;  "  and,  repelling  the  idea  that  any  disgrace 
could  attach  to  ourselves  from  this  occurrence,  it  proceeded  to 
recapitulate  the  successes  which  we  had  met  with  elsewhere. 
Adverting  to  the  great  numbers  of  the  militia  that  had  neces 
sarily  been  called  into  the  field,  the  message  recommended  an 
increase  of  the  regular  army  and  a  classification  of  the  militia 
for  active  service.  Adverting  to  the  state  of  the  finances,  it 
called  for  pecuniary  supplies  on  a  scale  commensurate  with  the 
extent  and  character  which  the  war  had  assumed. 

The  diplomatic  relations  of  the  war  had  been  somewhat 
changed  since  the  last  adjournment  of  Congress.  An  offer  of 
mediation  by  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  made  in  March,  1813,  had 


134  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VI. 

been  accepted  by  our  Government,  and  commissioners  had  been 
sent  to  Europe  to  await  the  result  of  this  proposal.  The  Brit 
ish  Government  declined  the  mediation,  and  proposed  to  treat 
directly  with  the  United  States.  Accordingly,  in  January, 
(1814),  a  new  commission  was  sent  to  our  plenipotentiaries,  who 
were  then  at  Gottenburg.  It  was  not,  however,  until  August, 
that  the  British  and  American  commissioners  met,  at  Ghent ; 
and  when  the  session  of  Congress  began  in  September,  the  nego 
tiation  was  in  progress,  but  with  little  prospect  of  a  successful 
result.  The  measures  of  the  session,  therefore,  related  to  the 
further  prosecution  of  the  war — or,  as  must  be  the  case  with 
nearly  all  measures  in  a  time  of  war,  they  related  directly  or 
indirectly  to  the  procurement  of  men  and  money. 

Mr.  Webster's  policy  was  a  policy  of  watchfulness.  He  was 
a  member  of  the  opposition,  but  an  independent  one.  Although 
classed  with  the  Federal  party  and  generally  acting  with  it,  he 
was  bound  by  no  party  trammels.  He  was  totally  unconnected 
with  any  measures  of  the  New-England  Federalists,  which, 
whether  justly  or  unjustly,  were  then  and  have  since  been 
regarded  as  objectionable.  He  left  his  home  for  this  session  of 
Congress  before  the  famous  "  Hartford  Convention  "  was  talked 
of  or  contemplated.1  When  he  heard  afterward  that  such  a 

1  For  the  benefit  of  readers  not  fa-  lieve  that  they  were  a  knot  of  trai- 
miliar  with  our  political  history,  to  whom  tors.  They  were,  in  truth,  some  of  the 
the  name  of  the  "  Hartford  Convention  "  most  eminent  and  virtuous  citizens  of 
will,  of  itself,  carry  no  meaning,  it  may  New  England,  whose  error  consisted  in 
be  well  to  explain  that  this  was  an  as-  holding  a  meeting  of  prominent  and  im- 
sembly  of  delegates  from  some  of  the  portant  men,  in  a  time  of  war,  to  delib- 
New-England  States,  which  met  at  Hart-  erate  secretly  on  public  affairs,  when  the 
ford,  in  Connecticut,  in  the  winter  of  administration  of  the  Government  was 
1814-'15,  and  sat  with  closed  doors.  It  in  the  hands  of  the  opposite  party, 
was  composed  of  men  of  very  high  per-  Under  such  circumstances,  they  could 
sonal  characters,  belonging  to  the  Fed-  not  "  escape  calumny." 
eral  party.  It  was  then  believed  by  At  different  times  in  Mr. Webster's  life 
their  political  opponents  that  their  meet-  efforts  were  made,  by  persons  unfriendly 
ing  had  a  treasonable  object,  namely,  to  to  him,  to  connect  him  in  some  way  with 
withdraw  the  New-England  States  from  this  assembly.  Among  these  efforts,  it 
the  Union,  on  account  of  the  war  with  appears  that,  about  the  year  1835,  it 
Great  Britain.  This  purpose  has  been  was  rumored  that  a  Mr.  Chamberlin,  of 
denied,  and  explanations  have  been  New  Hampshire,  had  received  a  letter 
made  ;  but  the  supposed  treasonable  from  Mr.  Webster,  approving  of  the  Hart- 
character  of  the  meeting  has  passed  into  ford  Convention.  Mr.  Chamberlin  had 
a  kind  of  popular  maxim.  Although  Mr.  died ;  but  his  papers  were  searched,  and 
Webster  had  no  connection  with  it,  and,  the  letter,  or  a  letter,  was  found,  and 
in  fact,  disapproved  of  it,  he  never  at  brought  to  the  city  of  New  York,  where 
any  time  regarded  it  as  seditious  or  a  caucus  was  held  over  it.  But,  as  it 
treasonable.  He  knew  the  chief  per-  did  not  contain  any  mention  of  the  Hart- 
sons  who  composed  it  too  well  to  be-  ford  Convention,  it  was  not  published. 


1815.]  HARTFORD   CONVENTION.  135 

meeting  was  proposed,  lie  advised  the  Governor  of  New  Hamp 
shire  not  to  appoint  delegates  to  it.  The  State  was,  in  fact,  not 
represented,  as  a  State,  in  that  convention ;  although  two  of 
the  counties  on  the  Connecticut  River,  a  hundred  miles  from  Mr. 
Webster's  residence,  sent  members  to  it.  Mr.  Webster  had  no 
connection  with  it  whatever.  This  will  account  for  a  fact  men 
tioned  in  the  following  extract  from  Mr.  Ticknor's  MS.  "  Recol 
lections  "  of  Mr.  Webster,  which  gives  some  interesting  sketches 
of  his  position  and  occupations  during  this  session  of  Con 
gress : 

"  In  January  and  February,  1815, 1  passed  some  time  at  Washington. 
I  lived  at  Crawford's  Hotel,  in  Georgetown,  which  was  then  a  sort  of  head 
quarters  of  the  Federal  members  of  Congress.  Mr.  King  and  Mr.  Gore, 
members  of  the  Senate,  lived  there  with  their  wives,  in  a  kind  of  state  now 
unknown ;  each  of  them  keeping  a  coach-and-four,  and  driving  every  morn 
ing  to  the  humble  chamber  in  which  the  Senate  then  met  in  consequence 
of  the  destruction  of  the  capitol  by  the  British.  At  the  same  hotel  lived 
Mr.  Mason,  Mr.  Webster,  and  several  other  distinguished  Federal  members 
of  Congress.  Mr.  Webster,  who  had  then  been  in  Congress  only  a  little 
more  than  two  years,  was  already  among  its  foremost  men,  and  stood  with 
Gaston  and  Hanson  to  lead  the  opposition  in  debate,  on  the  floor  of  the 
lower  House.  Most  of  the  Federal  members  at  that  time  had  ceased  to 
visit  at  the  President's  house.  Mr.  Webster,  however,  thought  it  proper 
to  continue  to  do  so,  and  then  and  always  maintained  friendly  relations 
with  Mr.  Madison,  and  spoke  of  him  with  respect.  His  society  was  much 
sought.  His  relations  with  Mr.  Gore,  dating  from  the  period  of  his  study 
ing  the  law,  and  his  intimate  friendship  with  Mr.  Mason,  never  at  any 
moment  interrupted  or  disturbed,  made  him  a  most  welcome  member  of 
that  brilliant  circle,  which  generally  met  in  the  evening  in  the  private  par 
lor  belonging  to  Mrs.  King  and  Mrs.  Gore,  which  was  rather  an  elegant 
drawing-room,  for  the  time. 

"  As  I  had  passed  two  days  at  Hartford,  in  the  same  private  quarters 
with  Mr.  Cabot,  Mr.  Otis,  and  several  of  the  principal  members  of  the  Hart 
ford  Convention,  then  in  session,  the  gentlemen,  Mr.  Gore  and  Mr.  Mason 
especially,  were  very  curious  to  learn  from  me  any  thing  that  I  might  know 
respecting  that  remarkable  body.  But  I  had  no  information  to  give  them. 
I  was  travelling  with  Mr.  S.  G.  Perkins,  and  for  that  reason  alone  lived 

These  facts  were   afterward  communi-  fact  stated  by  Mr.  Ticknor,  of  Mr.  Web- 

cated  to  Mr.  Webster  by  a  political  op-  ster's  and  Mr.  Mason's  entire  ignorance 

ponent.      Such  was  always  the  fate  of  of  what  was  going  on  at  Hartford,  is  new 

attempts  to  identify  him  with  that  meet-  and  striking.    As  I  shall  not  again  allude 

ing.      The  impossibility  of  his   having  to  this  topic,  I  may  here  refer  the  reader 

been    connected   with  it,   and   his   dis-  to  Mr.  Webster's  speech  in  reply  to  Mr. 

approbation    of   it,   are    stated    in    his  Hayne  ( TFbr&s,  iii.,  314,  315),  for  his  views 

Correspondence,  vol.  i.,  pp.  11, 184.    The  respecting  the  Hartford  Convention. 


136  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VI. 

with  Mr.  Cabot  and  his  friends,  who  communicated  none  of  their  secrets 
to  either  of  us.  Mr.  Gore,  and  more  especially  Mr.  Mason  and  Mr.  Web 
ster,  expressed  their  dissatisfaction  with  the  meeting  of  the  convention ; 
and  more  particularly  that  they  received  no  information  by  correspond 
ence  from  its  members.  They  gave  this  as  a  reason  for  asking  information 
concerning  it,  from  me. 

"Mr.  Webster's  room  was  next  to  Mr.  Mason's.  They  dined  at  a  con 
gressional  mess  in  the  same  house.  Mr.  Gore  and  Mr.  King  and  their 
ladies  had  a  private  table  together,  to  which  they  often  invited  friends. 
I  heard  Mr.  Webster  several  times  in  the  House,  not  in  formal  speeches, 
but  in  that  very  deliberate  conversational  manner,  and  with  the  peculiar 
exactness  of  phraseology,  which  marked  him  as  a  public  debater  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  He  did  not  fail  then,  any  more  than  afterward,  to  com 
mand  the  attention  of  the  House.  The  subjects  on  which  he  spoke  related 
to  the  common  course  of  business,  and  were  not  exciting  or  particularly  in 
teresting.  I  dined  repeatedly  at  the  congressional  mess,  of  which  he  was 
one.  I  met  him  at  Mr.  Gore's  table  and  elsewhere.  In  the  mess  he  was 
very  amusing,  talking  gayly,  and  as  if  no  care  rested  upon  him.  Every 
where  he  was  liked  as  a  social  companion. 

"  He  was  at  this  time  much  occupied  with  the  study  of  English  politics. 
Volumes  of  the  'Annual  Register,'  and  the  'Parliamentary  Debates,'  covered 
his  table ;  and  while  I  was  in  Washington  he  read  through  Brougham's 
'  Colonial  Policy  of  the  European  Powers,'  parts  of  which  he  praised  to 
me,  while  with  other  portions  he  was  much  dissatisfied.  When  convers 
ing  with  the  other  members  with  whom  I  constantly  saw  him,  he  seemed 
to  me  to  know  more  about  the  details  of  business  before  the  House  than 
any  of  them.  I  mean  that  he  appeared  to  know  more  what  was  to  come 
up  next,  or  soon,  facts  which  I  was  anxious  to  learn." 

In  the  first  debate  of  a  general  character  in  which  Mr.  Web 
ster  took  any  part  at  this  session,  his  position  as  an  opponent 
of  the  Administration  and  its  policy  was  denned  with  so  much 
precision,  that  no  vote  or  action  of  his  was  likely  to  be,  as  in 
fact  none  was,  at  the  time,  misapprehended  or  misrepresented. 
A  proposition  came  before  the  House  at  an  early  period  in  the 
session  to  grant  a  new  land  tax  of  twice  the  amount  of  the  last 
one.  In  assigning  his  reasons  for  voting  against  it,  Mr.  Web 
ster  said  that  although  majorities  in  legislative  bodies  some 
times  believed  it  to  be  in  their  power  to  place  dissenting  mem 
bers  in  a  situation  in  which  their  conduct  would  be  liable  to 
unfavorable  construction,  there  was  rarely  any  serious  difficulty 
attending  such  occasions,  and  on  the  present  one  there  was  no 
difficulty  at  all.  He  did  not  feel  himself  under  any  necessity 


1814.]  VOTE  AGAINST  THE  WAR  TAXES.  137 

either  of  obstructing  the  passage  of  the  taxes  through  the 
House,  or  of  taking  upon  himself  any  portion  of  the  responsi 
bility  of  laying  them.  A  case  might  arise  in  which  it  would  be 
for  those  who  had  been  the  minority  to  say  whether  the  sup 
plies  should  be  granted  or  withheld.  This  was  not  such  a  case ; 
it  was  certain  that  the  taxes  would  be  granted ;  and,  there 
fore,  as  he  had  not  the  power  of  withholding  supplies  until  a 
change  of  measures  in  carrying  on  the  war  could  be  compelled, 
he  did  not  think  it  fit,  by  adding  his  vote  to  the  vote  of  the  ma 
jority,  to  be  deemed  to  sanction  the  measures  of  the  Adminis 
tration,  through  a  voluntary  support  of  its  plans  of  finance. 
He  would  have  the  power  and  strength  of  the  nation  called 
forth  and  guided  by  different  hands,  to  compel  England  to 
make  a  peace  that  would  be  honorable  and  fair.  But,  as  he 
could  not  have  this,  and  as  the  supplies  did  not  depend  upon  his 
vote,  he  held  himself  at  liberty  not  to  approve,  without  reason, 
the  course  that  was  pursued. 

At  the  time  when  he  so  voted  against  the  taxes,  the  Presi 
dent  had  recently  transmitted  to  Congress  information  of  the 
state  of  the  negotiation  at  Ghent.  This  intelligence  did  not 
satisfy  Mr.  Webster  that  such  a  peace  was  demanded  on  our 
part  as  we  ought  to  demand,  or  that  England  meant  to  accede 
to  such  a  peace.1  He  did  not  consider  the  Administration  able 
to  carry  on  the  war  successfully,  and  did  not  choose  by  his  vote 
to  express  his  confidence  in  them.  He  thought  the  President 
ought  to  be  assisted  by  a  much  stronger  Cabinet ;  and,  looking 
at  the  actual  condition  of  the  negotiations  at  Ghent,  he  believed 
that  different  measures  at  home  were  essential  to  the  procure 
ment  of  a  peace  that  should  close  forever  all  existing  contro 
versies.  He  marked  out  his  course  respecting  the  taxes  accord 
ingly,  and  assigned  his  reasons  for  voting  against  them.  In 
doing  so,  he  acted  in  no  spirit  of  party ;  in  fact,  he  acted  quite 
as  independently  of  his  own  party  as  of  the  party  of  the  Ad 
ministration,  for  most  of  the  Federal  members  voted  for  the 
taxes. 

As  a  question  of  political  ethics,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
a  statesman,  in  such  governments  as  ours,  is  perfectly  entitled 
to  give  effect  to  his  opinions  respecting  the  measures  of  an  ad- 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  245. 


138  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  YI. 

ministration  by  voting  against  taxes,  even  if  they  are  war  taxes. 
The  question  whether  such  a  vote,  under  such  circumstances, 
is  right,  is  totally  different  from  the  question  whether  it  will 
be  popular.  A  mere  politician  will  be  very  unlikely  to  vote 
against  war  taxes.  If  he  does  not,  the  reason  is  patent.  Ap 
plying  the  standard  of  popularity,  his  action  in  voting  supplies 
is  right.  Applying  a  different  standard,  and  supposing  the 
opinions  avowed  to  be  honestly  held,  a  vote  against  war  taxes 
needs  no  defence.  The  distinction  between  the  governing 
motives  involves  the  whole  difference  between  a  politician  and  a 
statesman ;  although  all  the  members  of  an  opposition  who  vote 
for  supplies  to  carry  on  a  war  may  not  be  mere  politicians,  and 
all  who  vote  against  them  may  not  be  statesmen.  "With  respect 
to  the  judgment  to  be  formed  concerning  the  individual,  if  he 
was  a  person  of  sufficient  elevation  and  independence  of  char 
acter  to  assume  the  risk  of  unpopularity,  we  must  look  beyond 
that  to  higher  and  larger  considerations. 

Among  the  measures  that  were  proposed  at  this  session  for 
obtaining  men,  a  plan  for  a  conscription  or  compulsory  draft, 
that  was  much  debated  in  both  Houses,  at  once  arrested  Mr. 
"Webster's  attention,  and  he  determined  to  resist  it  as  a  usurpa 
tion.  The  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Monroe,  in  his  report  at  the 
beginning  of  the  session,  had  recommended  a  plan  for  a  forcible 
draught  of  the  whole  free  male  population  of  the  United  States, 
between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and  forty-five,  for  the  purpose  of 
recruiting  the  regular  army.  The  bill  which  was  introduced 
in  the  Senate,  and  which  passed  that  body,  was  not  exactly  of 
this  character,  but  it  was  a  plan  for  a  classification  of  the 
militia,  and  for  a  system  of  drafting  individuals,  including 
minors,  from  the  different  classes,  to  be  formed  into  regiments 
and  brigades.  Both  plans  involved  the  principles  of  conscrip 
tion,  and  in  both  Houses  the  discussion  involved  the  question 
of  the  constitutional  authority  of  Congress  either  to  fill  the 
regular  army  in  that  mode,  or  to  make  a  compulsory  draft 
of  individuals  from  the  militia  of  the  States.  The  supporters 
of  the  Administration  generally  asserted  these  powers  in  their 
fullest  extent;  the  members  of  the  opposition  denied  them. 
Mr.  Webster's  speech  on  this  subject  has  not  been  preserved. 
It  was  made  on  the  9th  of  December  (1814),  on  a  motion  to  in- 


1814.]  A  NATIONAL  BANK.  139 

definitely  postpone  the  bill,  and  it  was  written  out  by  him  after 
ward.  But  it  was  never  published,  and  the  manuscript  is  not 
now  to  be  found.  That  Mr.  Webster  regarded  both  of  these 
forms  of  conscription  as  entirely  unauthorized  by  the  Constitu 
tion,  is  apparent  from  his  correspondence,  from  the  arguments 
of  his  friends  in  each  of  the  two  Houses,  and  from  the  allusions 
to  his  opinions  made  by  the  friends  and  the  opponents  of  the 
measure  in  the  course  of  the  discussion.  Neither  of  the  two 
plans  ever  took  effect,  as  the  public  sentiment  entirely  accorded 
with  the  arguments  of  the  opposition.  In  1831,  Mr.  Webster 
referred  with  some  apparent  satisfaction  to  his  agency  in  de 
feating  this  measure,  in  these  words :  "I  had  a  hand,  with  Mr. 
Eppes  and  others,  in  overthrowing  Mr.  Monroe's  conscription 
in  1814." ' 

A  subject  to  which  great  political  interest  was  once  attached, 
and  one  on  which  Mr.  Webster  at  various  times  acted  a  very 
important  part — a  national  bank  and  the  currency  of  the  coun 
try — now  claims  the  reader's  attention.  It  may  be  well,  there 
fore,  to  preface  the  narrative  of  what  took  place  at  this  session, 

1  MS.  letter  (see  also  the  printed  Cor-  vided  for  by  the  Constitution,  and  can 
respondence,  vol.  i.,  pp.  245-248).  This  reach  it  in  no  other  way.  On  this  sub- 
question  of  the  constitutional  authority  ject,  the  speeches  of  Mr.  Mason,  Mr. 
of  the  Federal  Government  to  demand  Gore,  and  Mr.  Daggett,  in  the  Senate ; 
compulsory  military  service  of  the  citi-  and  of  Messrs.  Stockton,  Grosvenor, 
zens  of  the  States  was  discussed  with  Sheffey,  and  Cyrus  King,  in  the  House, 
great  ability  by  the  opposition,  in  1814,  are  especially  valuable.  Mr.  Mason's 
and  their  arguments  were  unanswered,  argument  was  the  most  important  one 
In  recent  times,  it  has  not  been  suf-  that  he  ever  made  on  a  constitutional 
ficiently  considered  that  the  exercise  of  question.  The  bill  was  indefinitely  post- 
such  a  power  displaces  the  authority  of  poned  in  the  Senate,  on  the  motion  of 
the  States  over  their  militia,  and,  when  Mr.  Rufus  King,  December  28, 1814.  Of 
exercised  over  minors,  that  it  annihilates  this  occurrence,  Mr.  Webster  wrote,  on 
the  rights  of  the  parent  or  guardian,  the  9th  of  January :  "  Mr.  King  is  get- 
which  are  exclusively  under  the  control  ting  a  good  deal  of  popularity  for  hav- 
of  the  State.  In  1814,  the  most  emi-  ing  moved  the  postponement  of  Giles's 
nent  constitutional  lawyers  in  Congress,  bill ;  it  was  accidental  and  unpremedi- 
on  the  opposition  side,  maintained  that  tated,  and  there  was  no  debate.  After 
the  Federal  power  "  to  raise  armies  "  is,  we  passed  the  bill,  with  amendments,  it 
by  the  necessary  effect  of  the  whole  con-  was  bandied  about  several  days  from 
stitutional  scheme  relating  to  the  mili-  House  to  House,  on  account  of  the  dis- 
tia,  to  be  regarded  as  extending  only  to  agreeing  votes  relative  to  the  amend- 
the  raising  of  regular  armies  by  con-  ments.  Being  one  day  before  the  Sen- 
tracts  of  enlistment  ;  that  the  citizen  ate,  and  it  being  known  that  public 
owes  compulsory  military  service  to  his  sentiment  had  terrified  the  vehement 
State,  in  its  militia ;  and  that  the  Fed-  Senators,  Mr.  King  made  the  motion, 
eral  Government  has  a  defined  power  of  Some  members  happened  to  be  out,  it 
reaching  that  compulsory  service  through  was  immediately  put  and  carried." — 
the  organized  militia  of  the  States,  by  ( Correspondence,  i.,  249.  See  further,  in 
calling  it  forth  on  the  occasions  pro-  the  Index,  verb.  "  conscription.") 


140  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VI. 

by  quoting  a  part  of  a  memorandum  written  by  him  in  1831, 
which  is  now  in  my  possession.  It  explains  the  leading  prin 
ciple  on  which  he  began  and  ever  afterward  continued  to  act 
upon  this  subject : 

"  One  of  the  first  things  which  engaged  my  attention,  after  I  had  be 
come  a  member  of  Congress,  was  the  currency  of  the  country.  It  had  be 
come  greatly  deranged.  The  old  Bank  of  the  United  States  had  expired 
in  1811,  and  on  that  occurrence  a  great  mass  of  additional  banking  capital 
had  been  put  in  operation  in  the  several  States.  Upon  the  breaking  out 
of  the  war,  most  of  the  State  banks  had  suspended  specie  payments.  This 
was  followed  by  the  greatest  irregularity  and  disorder  in  the  currency  of 
the  country.  Bank  paper  was  depreciated  on  a  scale  rapidly  descending 
from  North  to  South.  The  banks  of  Boston  paid  specie  on  demand,  and 
of  course  their  paper  was  equivalent  to  specie.  But  the  notes  of  the  New- 
York  banks  were  ten  per  centum  below  specie  value,  those  of  Philadelphia 
fifteen,  Baltimore  twenty,  and  Washington  twenty-five.  Taxes,  duties, 
and  debts  to  the  Government  were  everywhere  paid  in  the  bills  of  the 
local  banks.  This  was  undoubtedly  all  against  law,  because  bank  notes 
were  not  money,  and  because,  so  far  as  respected  custom-house  duties, 
there  was  an  express  statute,  of  long  standing,  requiring  them  to  be  paid 
in  gold  and  silver  coin.  One  effect  of  this  monstrous  derangement  of  the 
currency  was  that,  in  some  quarters,  the  public  burdens  were  discharged 
at  ten,  twenty,  or  twenty-five  per  cent,  less  payment  than  in  other  quarters. 
Throughout  all  the  debates  on  the  bank  question,  I  kept  steadily  in  view 
the  object  of  restoring  the  currency,  as  a  matter  of  the  very  first  impor 
tance,  without  which  it  would  be  impossible  to  establish  any  efficient  sys 
tem  of  revenue  and  finance.  The  very  first  step  toward  such  a  system  is  to 
provide  a  safe  medium  of  payment.  I  opposed,  therefore,  to  the  full  ex 
tent  of  my  power,  every  project  for  a  bank  so  constituted  that  it  might  issue 
irredeemable  paper,  and  thus  drown  and  overwhelm  us  still  more  com 
pletely  in  the  miseries  and  calamities  of  paper  money.  I  would  agree  to 
nothing  but  a  specie-paying  bank." 

The  first  Bank  of  the  United  States,  chartered  in  1791  for 
twenty  years,  had  given  rise  to  a  fundamental  difference  of 
opinion  in  the  Cabinet  of  President  Washington  on  the  question 
of  the  constitutional  power  of  Congress  to  create  such  an  institu 
tion.  Hamilton  was  its  principal  advocate,  and  Jefferson  its 
principal  opposer.  In  1811,  the  party  which  had  originally 
opposed  the  bank  defeated  the  renewal  of  its  charter.  In  1814 
-'15,  the  exigencies  of  the  Administration  strongly  demanded 
such  an  institution,  and  a  bill  to  create  one  was  introduced. 
Congress  was  at  that  time  divided  into  three  parties  on  this 


1814.]  A  NATIONAL  BANK.  141 

subject.  The  first  consisted  of  those  who  were  against  a  bank 
under  any  form.  The  number  of  these  persons  was  consider 
able.  They  belonged  generally  to  the  friends  of  the  Adminis 
tration.  They  voted,  therefore,  for  the  bank,  or  rather  with  its 
friends,  on  all  preliminary  and  incidental  questions,  but  on  the 
final  passage  they  voted  against  the  bill.  Accordingly,  there 
was  always  a  body  of  members  who,  from  their  original  oppo 
sition  to  any  national  bank,  were  at  last  to  be  found  voting 
against  any  project  of  the  kind. 

Second,  there  was  a  party  among  the  supporters  of  the  Ad 
ministration  who  were  in  favor  of  a  bank,  provided  it  should  be 
such  a  one  as  they  thought  would  not  only  regulate  the  cur 
rency  and  facilitate  the  operations  of  Government,  but  would 
also  afford  present  and  important  aids  by  heavy  loans,  for  which 
purpose  it  was  to  be  relieved  from  the  necessity  of  paying  its 
notes  in  specie.  This  party,  therefore,  was  in  favor  of  an  irre 
deemable  paper  currency. 

The  third  party  consisted  of  those  who  were  willing  to 
create  a  bank  with  a  reasonable  amount  of  capital,  compelled 
always  to  redeem  its  notes  in  specie,  and  at  liberty  to  judge  for 
itself  when  it  would  and  when  it  would  not  make  loans  to  the 
Government.  With  these  Mr.  Webster  acted.1 

The  bill  to  incorporate  a  national  bank  was  first  introduced 
in  the  Senate,  where  it  was  passed  by  a  majority  of  two  votes. 
As  it  came  into  the  House,  it  was  a  bill  which  proposed  to  con 
stitute  a  bank  with  a  capital  of  fifty  millions  of  dollars,  of 
which  four  millions  only  were  to  be  specie,  and  the  residue  to 
consist  of  Government  stocks,  then  much  depreciated.  Govern 
ment  was  to  have  the  power  to  borrow  from  the  bank  thirty 
millions.  The  notes  of  all  banks  south  of  New  England  being 
from  ten  to  twenty-five  per  cent,  below  the  specie  stancfard, 
specie  had  disappeared  from  circulation.  On  the  notes  of  the 
proposed  national  bank  specie  was  not  required  to  be  paid  until 
the  last  payment  on  its  stock  had  been  completed ;  and  the 
Government  was  to  have  the  power  at  all  times  to  make  any 
regulations  which  it  might  think  proper  in  regard  to  specie 
payments.  As  such  a  bank,  in  the  existing  circumstances  of 

1  This  statement  of  the  condition  of     verbatim  from  Mr.  Webster's  own  memo- 
parties  in  that  Congress  is  taken  almost    randum. 


142  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VI. 

the  country,  could  not  go  into  operation,  if  it  paid  specie  on  its 
bills,  because  its  specie  would  be  drained  at  once ;  and  as  the 
Government,  when  it  had  borrowed  thirty  millions  of  its  paper, 
must  protect  it  by  continuing  the  exemption  from  paying 
specie,  the  scheme  was  one  to  create  an  irredeemable  paper  cir 
culation,  founded  on  depreciated  Government  stocks.1 

The  discussion  on  this  bill  began  in  the  House  on  the  9th 
of  December  (1814),  and  was  continued  with  various  interrup 
tions  until  the  24th,  when  it  was  reported  by  the  Committee 
of  the  Whole,  amended.  Mr.  Webster  had  gone  to  Baltimore 
to  pass  Christmas.  He  was  sent  for  by  his  friends,  rode  to 
Washington  on  horseback  in  the  night  of  Monday,  the  26th, 
and  was  in  the  House  on  the  morning  of  Tuesday,  the  27th.3 
On  the  29th,  the  bill  was  put  on  its  final  passage,  and  Mr. 
Webster  had  just  moved  its  recommitment  with  certain  instruc 
tions,  when  the  House  adjourned.  On  the  same  night,  Mr. 
Brent,  a  Senator  from  Virginia,  died.  Yet  so  great  was  the 
anxiety  to  pass  this  bill,  that  the  House  when  it  assembled  on 
the  following  day,  although  the  death  of  Mr.  Brent  was  an 
nounced,  refused  to  adjourn  until  a  message  came  from  the 
Senate  respecting  arrangements  for  the  funeral,  when,  on 
motion  of  Mr.  Pleasants,  of  Virginia,  the  bill  was  laid  upon  the 
table.  ~No  business  was  transacted  until  Monday,  the  2d  of 
January.  On  that  day,  Mr.  Webster  made  a  speech  against 
the  bill,  on  his  motion  to  recommit  it  with  instructions. 

This  speech,  a  vigorous  exposition  of  the  bad  features  of 
such  a  bank,  is  contained  in  the  third  volume  of  Mr.  Webster's 
works,  and  it  is  therefore  not  needful  to  make  extracts  from  it. 
It  prevented  the  passage  of  the  bill ;  for,  although  the  House  re 
fused  to  recommit  it,  and  came  to  a  direct  vote  on  the  question 
of  its  final  passage,  the  vote  stood  eighty-one  yeas,  to  eighty 
nays.  Amidst  profound  silence,  the  Speaker,  Langdon  Cheves, 
of  South  Carolina,  rose,  and,  after  stating  briefly  but  impres 
sively  his  reasons  for  voting  against  the  bill,  announced  that 
it  was  lost,  by  a  tie.  Mr.  Calhoun,  although  not  an  advocate 

1  A  bill  of  the  same  character  had  came  before  the  House  on  the  9th   of 

been  rejected  by  the  House  on  the  28th  December. 

of  November.     It  was  then  introduced  2  The  distance   is   forty  miles.     He 

into  the  Senate,  and,  having  passed  that  went  on  horseback  because   the   roads 

body,  without  any  material  alteration,  it  were  then  very  bad. 


1815.]  A  NATIONAL  BANK.  143 

for  this  particular  bill,  was  deeply  concerned  about  the  situa 
tion  of  the  Government,  and  its  humiliating  condition  from  the 
want  of  resources  to  carry  on  the  war.  He  felt,  however,  that 
he  could  rely  on  Mr.  Webster's  willingness  to  give  the  Admin 
istration  a  proper  bank,  which  Mr.  Webster  had  repeatedly 
avowed  in  the  course  of  this  discussion.  As  soon  as  the  vote 
was  announced,  he  walked  across  the  floor  of  the  House  to  the 
spot  where  Mr.  Webster  stood,  and  holding  out  both  his  hands 
to  Mr.  Webster,  and  telling  him  that  he  should  rely  on  his 
assistance  in  preparing  a  new  bill,  burst  into  tears,  as  Mr.  Web 
ster  assured  him  the  assistance  should  not  be  withheld.1  The 
pledge  was  personally  redeemed ;  but  the  close  of  the  war, 
which  was  nearer  at  hand  than  was  then  known  to  either  of 
them,  put  an  end  for  a  time  to  discussions  about  a  bank,  after 
some  further  efforts  had  been  made  to  create  one. 

These  efforts  followed  a  motion,  made  on  the  day  after  this 
bill  was  rejected,  to  reconsider  the  vote.  Mr.  Webster  voted 
against  the  reconsideration,  but  it  was  carried,  and  he  then 
voted  for  the  recommitment  of  the  bill  to  a  select  committee, 
in  order  to  have  it  altered.  The  new  bill,  reported  by  the 
select  committee  on  the  6th  of  January  (1815),  reduced  the  capi 
tal  to  thirty  millions,  made  many  important  changes  in  re 
spect  to  the  payments  of  the  capital,  and  struck  out  the  pro 
vision  which  enabled  the  Government  to  borrow  thirty  millions 
from  the  bank,  with  its  accompanying  power  of  authorizing  a 
suspension  of  specie  payments.  This  being  a  real  specie-pay 
ing  bank,  Mr.  Webster  and  his  friends  voted  for  it,  and  it 
was  passed  on  the  Tth  of  January  by  a  very  large  majority. 
After  some  disagreement  between  the  two  Houses,  which  was 
finally  reconciled,  the  bill  was  passed  by  the  Senate  and  sent 
to  the  President,  who  returned  it  on  the  30th,  without  his  sig 
nature,  assigning  his  reasons.  The  grounds  of  the  "  veto  "  were 
chiefly  two :  first,  that  the  capital  of  the  bank,  in  respect  to  the 
media  in  which  it  was  to  be  paid,  was  not  well  compounded ; 
second,  that,  being  obliged  to  pay  specie  on  its  bills,  it  could 
not  furnish  a  circulating  medium  that  could  be  relied  on  during 
the  war,  nor  furnish  loans,  or  means  of  anticipating  the  rev- 

1  My  authority  for  this  anecdote  is  Webster  himself,  and  made  a  record 
Mr.  Ticknor,  who  received  it  from  Mr.  of  it. 


144  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VI. 

enue.  The  Senate  then  refused  to  pass  this  bill  over  the 
"  veto,"  and  immediately  proposed  another,  which  was  in  sub 
stance  like  the  bill  that  had  been  first  rejected  in  the  House  ; 
or  in  other  words,  it  was  a  bill  for  a  paper  bank.  On  this 
bill,  a  new  struggle  began  in  the  House  on  the  12th  of  Febru 
ary,  and  it  was  much  pressed  and  hurried.  But,  on  the  17th, 
news  of  the  treaty  of  peace  having  been  received,  the  bill  was 
indefinitely  postponed.  Thus  ended  for  the  present  the  efforts 
of  the  Administration  to  obtain  a  national  bank.  On  the  3d 
of  March  (1815),  the  Thirteenth  Congress  expired. 

From  this  narrative  it  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Webster  was 
not  unwilling,  during  the  war,  to  afford  to  the  Administration 
a  national  bank,  if  they  were  willing  to  take  one  which  he 
thought  fit  to  be  created.  On  the  point  of  constitutional  au 
thority  to  create  such  an  institution,  Mr.  Webster  did  not  differ 
from  President  Madison,  who,  in  his  "  veto  "  message,  held  this 
question  to  be  precluded  by  repeated  acts  of  all  branches  of  the 
Government  and  a  concurrence  of  the  general  will  of  the  nation. 
The  issue  between  Mr.  Webster  and  the  Administration,  there 
fore,  was  wholly  on  the  details  of  the  measure,  and  chiefly  on 
the  question  of  creating  a  paper  currency  not  redeemable  in 
specie.  Writing  to  his  brother,  after  the  loss  of  the  bill  which 
he  was  so  instrumental  in  defeating,  he  said  :  "  A  hundred  of 
the  narrowest  chances  alone  saved  us  from  a  complete  paper- 
money  system,  in  such  a  form  as  was  calculated  and  intended 
to  transfer  the  odium  of  depreciation  from  the  Government  to 
the  bank."  *  Writing  after  the  President  had  refused  to  sign 
the  subsequent  bill  for  which  he  voted,  he  said :  "  the  Presi 
dent  has  negatived  the  Bank  Bill.  So  all  our  labor  is  lost.  I 
hope  this  will  satisfy  our  friends,  that  it  was  not  a  bank  likely 
to  favor  the  Administration." : 

This,  then,  must  be  considered  the  starting-point  of  all  Mr. 
Webster's  public  conduct  on  this  subject.  He  had  entered  Con 
gress  with  a  firm  opinion  that  a  paper  currency,  not  redeemable 
in  specie  on  demand,  is  a  source  of  incalculable  evil  to  the  com 
munity  and  the  Government.  He  did  not  believe  that  the 

1  Letter  to  E.  Webster,  January  22,  The  meaning  of  Mr.  Webster,  in  the  let- 
1814.  ter  last  quoted,  was,  that  this  was  not  a 

2  Letter  to   the   same,  January  30,  bank  likely  to  be  in  favor  with  the  Ad- 
1814. — (Correspondence,   i.,    250,    251.)  ministration,  or  to  suit  it. 


1815.J  OPINIONS  ON  THE  CURRENCY.  145 

exigencies  of  war,  or  any  other  exigencies,  could  justify  sucli  a 
departure  from  all  the  sound  principles  of  finance ;  and  he  was 
especially  unwilling  to  create  a  national  institution  whose 
notes,  certain  to  be  depreciated,  were  to  be  received  by  the 
Government  in  payment  of  its  dues.  What  he  did,  and  with 
what  success,  to  bring  about-  a  better  state  of  things  in  this  re 
spect,  will  be  seen  hereafter. 
11 


146  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  VII. 


CHAPTEE   YII. 
1815-1816. 

FOURTEENTH  CONGRESS — NATIONAL  BANK — SPECIE  RESOLUTIONS — 
TARIFF  OF  1816 DEATH  OF  MR.  WEBSTER?S  MOTHER — CHAL 
LENGED  BY  MR.  RANDOLPH RETIRES  FROM  CONGRESS RE 
MOVAL  TO  BOSTON. 

IN  1831,  Mr.  Webster  said  that  he  had  seen  no  such  Congress 
for  talents  as  the  Fourteenth.1  It  commenced  its  first  ses 
sion  in  December,  1815.  Mr.  Clay,  after  taking  part  in  the 
negotiation  of  the  treaty  of  Ghent,  had  returned  to  Congress, 
and  was  again  Speaker.  Mr.  Calhoun  had  also  been  reflected. 
The  celebrated  John  Randolph,  of  Roanoke,  a  man  of  genius 
and  with  more  than  the  usual  eccentricities  of  genius,  was  again 
in  Congress.  Mr.  Pinkney,  then  the  first  lawyer  in  the  United 
States,  and  enjoying  by  far  the  largest  practice  at  the  bar  of 
the  Supreme  Court,  was  a  member  of  this  Congress  until  April, 
when  he  resigned  his  seat  to  accept  the  mission  to  Russia. 
Joseph  Hopkinson  and  John  Sergeant,  of  Pennsylvania ;  Alex 
ander  C.  Hanson,  of  Maryland ;  Daniel  Sheifey,  of  Virginia ; 
Henry  Southard,  of  New  Jersey ;  William  Lowndes,  of  South 
Carolina ;  William  Gaston,  of  North  Carolina  ;  John  McLean, 
of  Ohio;  Samuel  R.  Betts,  of  New  York;  John  Forsyth,  of 
Georgia ;  and  many  other  able  men  were  on  the  roll  of  a  House 
which,  even  without  the  names  of  Clay,  Calhoun,  Randolph, 
Pinkney,  and  Webster,  would  have  been  accounted  no  ordinary 
assembly.  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr.  Webster,  on  opposite  sides, 

1  MS.  letter. 


1816.]  NATIONAL   BANK   OF   1816.  147 

exercised  the  largest  influence  on  the  course  of  business,  al 
though  Mr.  Randolph  was  a  much  more  frequent  speaker  than 
either  of  them.  Mr.  Clay  participated  a  good  deal  in  the  dis 
cussions,  especially  in  Committees  of  the  Whole.  Mr.  Pinkney 
made  but  one  speech  while  he  was  a  member  of  this  House — a 
very  profound  one,  on  the  treaty  power,  in  reference  to  a  bill  to 
regulate  commerce  with  Great  Britain,  which  was  supposed  to 
be  necessary  in  order  to  carry  out  the  convention  of  July  3, 1815. 1 
Mr.  "Webster,  who  had  been  reflected  for  New  Hampshire, 
did  not  take  his  seat  until  the  7th  of  February  (1816),  although 
he  was  in  Washington  in  the  early  part  of  January  with  Mrs. 
Webster.  They  were  recalled  by  the  illness  of  their  little 
daughter  Grace,  who  had  been  left  with  some  friends  near 
Boston.  On  the  child's  recovery,  Mr.  Webster  returned  to 
Washington,  and  found  the  subject  of  a  national  bank  again 
before  Congress.  This  was  the  bill  which  incorporated  the  last 
bank  of  the  United  States  that  was  ever  created.  As  Mr.  Web 
ster  found  it  before  the  House,  it  was  a  bill  possessing  the  same 
objectionable  features  which  he  had  opposed  in  the  preceding 
Congress.  Having  already  quoted  from  a  memorandum  writ 
ten  by  him  in  1831,  in  explanation  of  his  course  on  the  former 
bill,  I  resort  to  the  same  paper  for  the  purpose  of  using  his  own 
words  in  reference  to  the  present  one : 

"  On  the  introduction  of  the  bill  to  incorporate  the  present  bank,  I  op 
posed  its  proposed  amount  of  capital — fifty  millions — as  being  unneces 
sarily  large,  and  still  more  vehemently  the  power  proposed  to  be  given  to  the 

1  The  strange  insolence  of  Mr.  Ran-  very  puerile  insults  for  the  mere  sake  of 
dolph — it  can  be  called  by  no  other  giving  annoyance.  Notwithstanding  he 
name — was  exercised  toward  Mr.  Pink-  boasted  himself  to  be  "  one  of  the  best 
ney  on  this  occasion,  by  commencing  shots  in  Virginia,"  it  is  probably  due  to 
his  reply  to  that  most  distinguished  the  conviction  of  his  partial  insanity, 
person  in  this  way :  "  I  give  up  to  the  among  those  of  his  contemporaries  who 
gentleman  from  Maryland — I  am  told  he  admitted  the  practice  of  duelling,  that 
is  from  Maryland — those  fanciful  and  he  died  in  his  bed.  But  he  was  visited 
fine-spun  theories,"  etc.  At  the  mo-  sometimes  with  deep  and  extreme  com 
ment  of  this  supercilious  affectation  of  punctions,  after  having  outraged  all  pro- 
ignorance  respecting  Mr.  Pinkney's  rep-  priety,  which  made  him  break  out  in 
resentative  character,  he  stood  at  the  further  eccentricities,  that  were  often  as 
zenith  of  his  great  fame  as  a  lawyer,  touching  as  his  previous  conduct  had 
had  been  Attorney-General  of  the  United  been  provoking. — (See  the  account  Of 
States,  and  minister  to  Great  Britain,  his  singular  magnanimity  and  tender- 
and  his  name  was  as  much  identified  ness  during  and  after  his  duel  with  Mr. 
with  the  State  of  Maryland  and  the  city  Clay,  as  given  in  his  Life  by  Mr.  Garland ; 
of  Baltimore  as  it  was  possible  for  the  and  also  the  correspondence  attending 
name  of  any  man  to  have  a  local  habita-  his  challenge  of  Mr.  Webster,  given  in 
tion.  But  Randolph  often  descended  to  the  present  chapter,  post.) 


148  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VII. 

President  of  the  United  States,  to  authorize  a  suspension  of  specie  pay 
ments.  In  both  these  respects,  my  opposition,  with  that  of  others,  was 
successful :  the  proposed  amount  of  capital  was  reduced,  and  the  power  to 
authorize  a  suspension  of  specie  payments  was  stricken  out.  It  was  also 
my  opinion  that  the  Government  should  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  ap 
pointment  of  directors,  as  it  had  not  in  the  first  bank.  As  the  Government 
itself  was  to  be  a  large  subscriber  to  the  present  institution,  it  was  by  some 
deemed  reasonable  that  it  should  have  its  proper  voice  in  the  annual  con 
stitution  of  the  board  of  directors.  But  I  was  opposed  to  the  subscription 
to  the  stock  on  the  part  of  the  Government,  and  this,  together  with  the 
appointment  of  Government  directors,  and  a  hope  of  other  useful  changes 
in  the  charter,  influenced  my  final  vote,  which  is  known  to  have  been 
against  the  bill.  I  was  at  special  pains  to  convince  Congress  and  the 
country  that  a  paper  bank  would  be  ruinous ;  a  bank  with  an  inordinate 
amount  of  capital,  such  as  fifty  millions,  dangerous ;  and  that  all  hope  of 
restoring  the  currency  of  the  country,  even  by  means  of  the  best-conducted 
bank,  futile,  until  the  Government  itself  should  execute  existing  laws,  and 
require  payment  of  debts  and  taxes  in  legal  coin,  or  in  the  paper  of  specie- 
paying  banks." 

In  the  speech  which  Mr.  Webster  made  upon  this  bill  on 
the  28th  of  February  (1816),  he  said : 

"  It  was  a  mistaken  idea  which  he  had  heard  uttered  on  this  subject, 
that  we  were  about  to  reform  the  national  currency.  No  nation  had  a  better 
currency  than  the  United  States  ;  there  was  no  nation  which  had  guarded 
its  currency  with  more  care,  for  the  franiers  of  the  Constitution,  and  those 
who  enacted  the  early  statutes  on  this  subject,  were  hard-money  men  ;  they 
had  felt,  and  therefore  duly  appreciated,  the  evils  of  a  paper  medium ;  they 
therefore  sedulously  guarded  the  currency  of  the  United  States  from  de 
basement.  The  legal  currency  of  the  United  States  was  gold  and  silver 
coin.  This  was  a  subject  in  regard  to  which  Congress  had  run  into  no 
folly.  What,  then,  was  the  present  evil  ?  Having  a  perfectly  sound  na 
tional  currency — and  the  Government  have  no  power,  in  fact,  to  make  any 
thing  else  current  but  gold  and  silver — there  had  grown  up  in  different 
States  a  currency  of  paper  issued  by  banks,  setting  out  with  the  promise 
to  pay  gold  and  silver,  which  they  had  been  wholly  unable  to  redeem. 
The  consequence  was,  that  there  was  a  mass  of  paper  afloat,  of  perhaps  fifty 
millions,  which  sustained  no  immediate  relation  to  the  legal  currency  of 
the  country — a  paper  which  will  not  enable  any  man  to  pay  money  he 
.owes  to  his  neighbor,  or  his  debts  to  the  Government.  The  banks  had 
issued  more  paper  than  they  could  redeem,  and  the  evil  was  severely  felt. 
He  declined  occupying  the  time  of  the  House  to  prove  that  there  was  a 
depreciation  of  the  paper  in  circulation ;  the  legal  standard  of  value  was 
gold  and  silver ;  the  relation  of  paper  to  it  proved  its  state,  and  the  rate 
of  its  depreciation.  Gold  and  silver  currency  is  the  law  of  the  land  at 


1816.]  THE  CURRENCY.  149 

home  and  the  law  of  the  world  abroad ;  there  could  in  the  present  state 
of  the  world  be  no  other  currency.  In  consequence  of  the  immense  paper 
issues  having  banished  specie  from  circulation,  the  Government  has  been 
obliged,  in  direct  violation  of  existing  statutes,  to  receive  the  amount  of 
their  taxes  in  something  which  is  not  recognized  by  law  as  the  money  of 
the  country,  and  which  is,  in  fact,  greatly  depreciated.  This  was  the  evil. 

"  In  his  opinion,"  Mr.  Webster  said,  "  any  remedy  now  to  be  applied 
to  this  evil  must  be  applied  to  the  depreciated  mass  of  paper  itself;  it 
must  be  some  measure  that  would  give  heat  and  life  to  this  mortified  mass 
of  the  body  politic.  The  evil  was  not  to  be  remedied  by  introducing  a 
new  paper  circulation ;  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  two  media  in  cir 
culation,  the  one  credited  and  the  other  discredited.  All  bank  paper  de 
rives  its  credit  solely  from  its  relation  to  gold  and  silver ;  and  there  was  no 
remedy  for  the  state  of  depreciation  of  the  paper  currency  but  the  resump 
tion  of  specie  payments.  If  all  the  property  of  the  United  States  was 
pledged  for  the  redemption  of  these  fifty  millions  of  paper,  it  would  not 
thereby  be  brought  up  to  par ;  or  if  it  were,  that  would  happen  which  had 
never  yet  happened  in  any  other  country.  An  issue  of  Treasury  notes 
would  have  no  better  effect  than  the  establishment  of  a  new  bank  paper. 
At  a  period  anterior  to  the  reformation  of  the  coin  in  England,  when 
existing  coin  had  been  much  debased  by  clipping,  an  attempt  had  been 
made  to  correct  the  vitiated  currency  by  throwing  a  quantity  of  sound 
coin  into  circulation  with  the  debased ;  the  result  was,  that  the  sound  coin 
disappeared,  was  hoarded  up,  because  more  valuable  than  that  of  the  same 
nominal  value  which  was  in  general  circulation. 

"  The  State  banks  not  emanating  from  Congress,  what  engine  could 
Congress  use  for  remedying  the  existing  evil?  Their  only  legitimate 
power  was,  to  interdict  the  paper  of  such  banks  as  do  not  pay  specie  from 
being  received  at  the  custom-house.  With  a  receipt  of  forty  millions  a 
year,  if  the  Government  was  faithful  to  itself  and  to  the  interests  of  the 
people,  they  could  control  the  evil ;  it  was  their  duty  to  make  the  effort ; 
they  should  have  made  it  long  ago,  and  they  ought  now  to  make  it. 

"  The  whole  strength  of  the  Government  ought  to  be  put  forth  to  compel 
the  payment  of  the  duties  and  taxes  in  the  legal  currency  of  the  country. 
In  regard  to  the  plan  of  the  proposed  bank,  he  would  consent  to  no  bank 
which  to  all  intents  and  purposes  was  not  a  specie  bank ;  and  in  that  view 
he  was  in  favor  of  the  proposed  amendment.  He  expressed  some  alarm  at 
the  stock  feature  of  the  bank,  which  would  enable  and  might  induce  the 
existing  bank  corporations  to  come  forward  and  take  up  the  whole  stock 
of  this  national  bank.1  He  should  be  glad  to  see  a  bank  established 

1  At  the  foot  of  the  memorandum  of  ster's  handwriting,  in  reference  to  the 
1831,  I  find  the  following,  in  Mr.  Web-  prediction  of  excessive  speculation  in  the 


150  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VII. 

which  would  command  the  solid  capital  of  the  country.  There  were  men 
of  wealth  and  standing  who  would  embark  their  funds  in  a  bank  consti 
tuted  on  commercial  specie  principles,  but  who  would  not  associate  in 
such  an  institution  with  the  stockholders  in  the  country  [banks]  any  more 
than  a  good  currency  would  associate  with  a  bad  one." 

On  the  5th  of  April,  after  the  bill,  which  had  passed  the 
House,  had  been  returned  from  the  Senate  with  some  modi 
fications,  Mr.  Webster  stated  his  objections  to  it  on  account 
of  the  participation  of  the  Government  in  its  direction  and 
management.  It  was  passed,  however,  on  that  day,  Mr.  Web 
ster  voting  against  it,  and  it  soon  afterward  received  the  signa 
ture  of  the  President.  Mr.  Calhoun  immediately  introduced  a 
bill  to  require  the  collection  of  the  revenue  in  the  lawful  money 
of  the  United  States.  This  bill  was  rejected.  Mr.  "Webster 
then  presented  his  resolutions  of  April  26,  1816,  which  required 
all  dues  to  the  Government  to  be  paid  in  coin,  or  in  Treasury 
notes,  or  in  the  notes  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States.  They 
were  adopted  by  a  large  majority.  His  great  object  in  this 
measure  is  thus  stated  in  the  memorandum  of  1831 : 

"  The  peace  did  not  put  an  end  to  the  disorders  of  the  currency.  The 
State  banks  did  not  resume  specie  payments.  The  present  Bank  of  the 
United  States  was  incorporated ;  and  it  was  under  these  circumstances 
that  I  brought  forward  the  resolutions  of  April,  1816.  When  introduced, 
they  bore  a  preamble  which,  I  dare  say,  appears  on  the  Journal,  and  which 
may  perhaps  be  worth  looking  up.  This  was  dropped  in  the  progress  of 
the  measure,  as  it  was  thought  to  be  unimportant,  and  as  it  implied  some 
sort  of  censure  on  the  past  administration  of  the  Treasury.  The  resolutions 
had  all  the  desired  effect.  They  brought  about  an  entire  change  in  the 
currency  of  the  country.  Duties  and  taxes,  debts  for  lands,  etc.,  were  then 
equally  borne  and  equally  paid.  After  some  years  of  unfortunate  manage 
ment,  the  national  bank  took  a  good  direction ;  and  from  that  time  to  this 
the  United  States  have  had  a  currency  perfectly  sound  and  safe,  and 
more  convenient,  and  producing  local  exchanges  at  less  expense,  than  any 
other  nation  is  or  ever  was  blessed  with." 

It  required  no  little  strength  of  argument,  power  of  illustra 
tion,  and  force  of  character,  to  lead  a  House,  which  had  just 
rejected  a  similar  measure  in  the  form  of  a  bill,  to  assert  the 

stock  of  the  proposed  bank  :    "  The  early  enormous  subscriptions  to  the  proposed 

history  of  the  bank  shows  that  if  it  was  institution  for  purposes  of  speculation, 

not  foresight,  it  was  at  least  singularly  and   out   of  all  proportion  to   the  real 

fortunate     guessing,     which     predicted  ability  of  the  subscribers." 


1816.]  THE  CURRENCY.  151 

same  principle  in  the  form  of  a  resolution.  But  Mr.  Webster 
had  mastered  this  subject,  and  he  was  exceedingly  in  earnest 
about  it.  While  he  was  able  to  show  that  the  superior  sound 
ness  of  the  banks  in  his  own  section  of  the  country,  which  paid 
their  bills  in  specie,  was  the  very  cause  that  made  the  payment 
of  taxes  and  duties  in  that  section  twenty-five  per  cent,  higher 
than  in  other  parts  of  the  Union,  so  long  as  the  Government 
continued  to  receive  depreciated  paper,  he  was  also  able 
to  convince  the  House  that  this  state  of  things  must  be 
changed,  or  it  would  affect  the  stability  of  the  Government. 
He  said : 

"  It  is  our  business  to  foresee  this  danger,  and  to  avoid  it.  There  are 
some  political  evils  which  are  seen  as  soon  as  they  are  dangerous,  and 
which  alarm  at  once  as  well  the  people  as  the  Government.  Wars  and  in 
vasions,  therefore,  are  not  always  the  most  certain  destroyers  of  national 
prosperity.  They  come  in  no  questionable  shape.  They  announce  their 
own  approach,  and  the  general  security  is  preserved  by  the  general  alarm. 
Not  so  with  the  evils  of  a  debased  coin,  a  depreciated  paper  currency,  9r  a 
depressed  and  falling  public  credit.  Not  so  with  the  plausible  and  insidi 
ous  mischiefs  of  a  paper-money  system.  These  insinuate  themselves  in  the 
shape  of  facilities,  accommodation,  relief.  They  hold  out  the  most  fal 
lacious  hope  of  an  easy  payment  of  debts,  and  a  lighter  burden  of  taxa 
tion.  It  is  easy  for  a  portion  of  the  people  to  imagine  that  Government 
may  properly  continue  to  receive  depreciated  paper,  because  they  have  re 
ceived  it,  and  because  it  is  more  easy  to  obtain  it  than  to  obtain  other 
paper,  or  specie.  But  on  these  subjects  it  is  that  Government  ought  to  ex 
ercise  its  own  peculiar  wisdom  and  caution.  It  is  supposed  to  possess,  on 
subjects  of  this  nature,  somewhat  more  of  foresight  than  has  fallen  to  the 
lot  of  individuals.  It  is  bound  to  foresee  the  evil  before  every  man  feels 
it,  and  to  take  all  necessary  measures  to  guard  against  it,  although  they 
may  be  measures  attended  with  some  difficulty,  and  not  without  temporary 
inconvenience.  In  my  humble  judgment,  the  evil  demands  the  immediate 
attention  of  Congress.  It  is  not  certain,  and  in  my  opinion  not  probable, 
that  it  will  ever  cure  itself.  It  is  more  likely  to  grow  by  indulgence,  while 
the  remedy  which  must  in  the  end  be  applied  will  become  less  efficacious 
by  delay. 

"  The  only  power  which  the  General  Government  possesses  of  restrain 
ing  the  issues  of  the  State  banks  is,  to  refuse  their  notes  in  the  receipts  of  the 
Treasury.  This  power  it  can  exercise  now,  or  at  least  it  can  provide  now 
for  exercising  it  in  reasonable  time,  because  the  currency  of  some  part  of 
the  country  is  yet  sound,  and  the  evil  is  not  yet  universal.  If  it  should  be 
come  universal,  who  that  hesitates  now  will  then  propose  any  adequate 
means  of  relief?  If  a  measure,  like  the  bill  of  yesterday,  or  the  resolution 


152  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VII. 

of  to-day,  can  hardly  pass  here  now,  what  hope  is  there  that  any  efficient 
measures  will  be  adopted  hereafter  ?  " 

At  this  session  of  Congress,  an  important  change  took  place 
in  the  tariff  by  the  passage  of  an  act  which  was  the  first  in  the 
series  that  came  afterward  to  be  regarded  in  South  Carolina  as 
oppressive  and  unconstitutional.  Mr.  Webster's  relation  to  the 
tariff  of  1816  is  to  be  understood  by  examining  the  efforts 
which  he  made  and  the  votes  which  he  gave  upon  the  details 
of  the  bill.  It  was  an  Administration  measure,  founded  chiefly 
on  a  scheme  prepared  and  submitted  to  Congress  by  the  Secre 
tary  of  the  Treasury,  Mr.  Dallas,  in  which  the  protection  and 
encouragement  of  manufactures  was  avowedly  the  leading  ob 
ject.  It  was  warmly  advocated  by  the  principal  members  from 
South  Carolina,  including  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr.  Lowndes. 
The  bill,  as  reported  by  the  Committee  of  Ways  and  Means, 
proposed  to  lay  a  duty  of  twenty-five  per  cent,  ad  valorem  on 
all  cotton  and  woollen  manufactured  goods ;  which,  on  motion 
of  Mr.  Clay,  was  increased,  as  to  manufactures  of  cotton,  to 
thirty  per  cent.  It  was  apparent  to  Mr.  Webster  that  such  a 
duty  would  put  an  end  to  the  importation  of  India  cottons,  a 
business  in  which  a  large  amount  of  shipping  was  then  em 
ployed.  He  was  satisfied,  too,  that  a  duty  so  high  as  that  pro 
posed  would  expose  the  manufacture  of  cotton  goods  in  this 
country  to  the  danger  of  a  fluctuating  policy,  as  he  did  not  be 
lieve  that  such  a  duty  could  be  permanent.  The  latter  effect 
he  thought  he  could  avert ;  the  former  he  could  not  prevent, 
for  it  had  become  manifest  that  those  who  advocated  this  meas 
ure  intended  to  exclude  as  many  of  the  foreign  fabrics  as  they 
could.  A  duty  of  even  twenty  per  cent,  was  sufficient  to  ex 
clude  the  India  cottons,  and  therefore  it  was  not  probable  that 
Mr.  Webster  could  obtain  a  graduation  of  the  duties  to  any 
lower  point.  He  proposed,  consequently,  to  fix  the  duties  on 
cotton  goods  at  thirty  per  cent,  ad  valorem  for  two  years  from 
the  30th  of  June,  1816,  at  twenty-five  per  cent,  for  the  two 
years  next  succeeding,  and  at  twenty  per  cent,  after  the  expira 
tion  of  the  last  period.  If  protection  was  to  be  given,  he  wished 
it  to  be  permanent.  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr.  Lowndes  were  of 
opinion  that  an  ultimate  and  permanent  duty  of  twenty  per 
cent,  would  be  sufficient  for  the  protection  which  they  sought, 


1816.]  A  STEAM  NAVY.  153 

and  Mr.  "Webster's  proposition  was  agreed  to  by  a  large  ma 
jority.1  Subsequently,  in  justice  to  those  who  had  embarked 
in  the  India  trade  before  this  great  change  of  policy  could  have 
been  anticipated,  Mr.  Webster  advocated  and  voted  for  a  pro 
vision  admitting  India  cottons  that  might  arrive  in  this  country 
before  the  1st  of  March,  1817,  in  vessels  that  sailed  from  the 
United  States  before  the  1st  of  February,  1816,  on  the  payment 
of  a  duty  of  thirty-three  and  one-third  per  cent,  on  their  cost, 
and  on  twenty  per  cent,  added  to  their  cost.  In  this  shape,  the 
tariff  of  1816  went  into  operation,  and  under  it  the  importation 
of  India  cottons  was  extinguished. 

With  the  same  general  view  of  securing  such  a  system  as 
would  be  likely  to  be  permanent,  and  would  inflict  the  least  in 
jury  on  the  navigating  interests,  Mr.  "Webster  voted  for  reduc 
tions  of  the  duties  proposed  by  this  bill  on  woollen  goods,  iron, 
and  hemp.  He  does  not  appear  to  have  entered  into  the  dis 
cussion  on  the  general  principle  of  protection.  Mr.  Calhoun 
asserted  its  policy,  and  did  not  question  the  constitutional 
power.  Mr.  Webster  did  not  question  the  constitutional  power 
any  more  than  Mr.  Calhoun ;  and  with  respect  to  the  policy, 
finding  that  it  was  to  prevail,  he  sought  to  mitigate  the  effects 
of  so  great  a  change,  and  to  prevent  a  future  reaction. 

Mr.  Webster  appears  to  have  taken  an  active  part  in  but 
one  other  measure  of  this  session.  This  related  to  a  matter 
which  must  now  be  looked  upon  with  singular  interest,  as  it 
marks  the  early  beginnings  of  a  steam  navy,  and  the  concep 
tions  in  regard  to  it  which  then  prevailed.  A  proposition  was 
introduced  to  authorize  the  building  of  three  steam  "  batteries." 
The  idea  seems  to  have  been  entertained  by  the  naval  commit 
tee,  and  by  many  other  members,  that  these  structures  would 
necessarily  be  stationary,  or  nearly  so  ;  and  the  question  was, 
whether  they  should  by  law  be  required  to  be  built  and  kept 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Chesapeake,  or  at  the  mouth  of  the  Missis 
sippi.  Members  objected  to  its  being  left  in  the  discretion  of 
the  President  to  direct  the  place  of  building  and  using  them. 
One  gentleman  said  that  steam-frigates  might  possibly  move 

1  A  change  was  afterward  made,  be-  rem  for  three  years  from  June  30,  1816, 
fore  the  bill  finally  passed,  so  as  to  levy  and  a  duty  of  twenty  per  cent,  there- 
a  duty  of  twenty-five  per  cent,  ad  valo-  after. 


154:  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  VII. 

from  New  York  to  Philadelphia,  but  it  would  be  impracticable 
to  navigate  the  coast  with  them  to  New  Orleans,  a  voyage  to 
which,  from  any  of  the  other  cities,  was  as  difficult  and  danger 
ous  as  one  across  the  Atlantic.  Mr.  "Webster  appears  to  have 
better  understood  what  could  be  done.  He  had  satisfied  him 
self,  on  the  statements  of  experienced  persons,  that  steam-frig 
ates  could  be  built  to  move  anywhere.  He  thought,  therefore, 
that  these  vessels  should  be  treated  as  strictly  a  part  of  the 
navy,  and  be  placed  entirely  under  the  control  of  the  President. 
He  moved  to  modify  the  bill  accordingly,  and  his  motion  was 
adopted  by  a  large  majority.1 

Before  Mr.  Webster  left  Washington,  at  the  close  of  this 
session,  he  heard  of  an  alarming  illness  of  his  mother,  who  had 
resided  with  his  brother  Ezekiel,  at  Boscawen,  since  the  death 
of  their  father.  "  If,"  he  wrote  to  his  brother,  "  she  should  be 
living  on  the  receipt  of  this,  tell  her,  I  pray  for  her  everlasting 
peace  and  happiness,  and  would  give  her  a  son's  blessing  for 
all  her  parental  goodness.  May  God  bless  her  living  or  dying. 
If  she  does  not  survive,  let  her  rest  beside  her  husband  and  our 
father."  The  good  lady  did  not  survive ;  and  on  the  28th 
of  April  she  was  laid  at  the  appointed  place,  in  the  burial- 
ground  at  Franklin,  where  a  plain  inscription  still  marks  her 
grave  and  that  of  her  husband. 

It  was  during  this  session  that  Mr.  Webster  received  a  chal 
lenge  from  Mr.  Randolph ;  the  sole  instance  in  which  a  message  of 
that  character  was  ever  sent  to  him.  He  was  not,  at  any  period 
of  his  life,  likely  to  be  much  embarrassed  or  disconcerted  by  a 
demand  of  this  nature,  for  he  never  gave  any. real  occasion  for 
one.  He,  moreover,  held  the  practice  of  duelling  in  great  con 
tempt.  On  this  occasion,  it  was  apparent  to  all  who  witnessed 
what  occurred  in  the  House  between  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr. 
Randolph,  that  the  latter  had  no  just  ground  for  requiring  an 
explanation ;  for,  as  soon  as  it  was  known  that  he  had  sent  Mr. 
Webster  a  challenge,  several  gentlemen,  friends  of  both  parties, 
came  forward  and  effected  an  amicable  adjustment  of  the  diffi 
culty.  The  sedate  and  firm  answer  of  Mr.  Webster  to  Mr. 
Randolph's  message  made  it  apparent  that  there  was  no  real 
cause  for  Mr.  Randolph's  sensitiveness,  and  it  also  disclosed 

1  April  14,  1816. 


1816.]  CHALLENGED   BY  MR.   RANDOLPH.  155 

Mr.  Webster's  sentiments  respecting  this  form   of  obtaining 
"  satisfaction."  ' 

[MR.  WEBSTER  TO  MR.  RANDOLPH.] 

"  SIR  :  For  having  declined  to  comply  with  your  demand  yesterday 
in  the  House,  for  an  explanation  of  words  of  a  general  nature,  used  in 
debate,  you  now  '  demand  of  me  that  satisfaction  which  your  insulted 

feelings  require,'  and  refer  me  to  your  friend,  Mr. ,  I  presume,  as  he 

is  the  bearer  of  your  note,  for  such  arrangements  as  are  usual. 

"  This  demand  for  explanation,  you,  in  my  judgment,  as  a  matter  of 
right,  were  not  entitled  to  make  on  me ;  nor  were  the  temper  and  style 
of  your  own  reply  to  my  objection  to  the  sugar  tax  of  a  character  to 
induce  me  to  accord  it  as  a  matter  of  courtesy. 

"  Neither  can  I,  under  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  recognize  in  you 
a  right  to  call  me  to  the  field  to  answer  what  you  may  please  to  con 
sider  an  insult  to  your  feelings. 

"It  is  unnecessary  for  me  to  state  other  and  obvious  considerations 
growing  out  of  this  case.  It  is  enough  that  I  do  not  feel  myself  bound, 
at  all  times  and  under  any  circumstances,  to  accept  from  any  man,  who 
shall  choose  to  risk  his  own  life,  an  invitation  of  this  sort ;  although  I 
shall  be  always  prepared  to  repel  in  a  suitable  manner  the  aggression 
of  any  man  who  may  presume  upon  such  a  refusal. 

"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

After  this  note  had  been  delivered  to  Mr.  Randolph,  and  the 
whole  affair  had  been  adjusted,  Mr.  Webster,  who  had  kept  no 
copy  of  his  part  of  the  correspondence,  wrrote  to  Mr.  Randolph, 
at  the  close  of  the  session,  to  request  one.  The  following  reply, 
marked  by  the  generous  feelings  and  morbid  characteristics  of 
the  writer,  reached  Mr.  Webster  on  his  return  to  Boston  : 

[MR.  RANDOLPH  TO  MR.  WEBSTER.] 

"  DAVIS,  NINE  MILES  FBOM  WASHINGTON,  ON  THE  ) 

BALTIMOBE  ROAD,  August  30,  1816.  ) 

"  SIR  :  Your  polite  and  friendly  note  was  put  into  my  hands  this  morn 
ing,  under  circumstances  that  did  not  permit  me  to  write.  I  now  regret  very 

1  I  have  said  in  the  text  that  Mr.  Web-  letter  to  his  son  Fletcher,  on  one  of  those 

ster  held  the  practice  of  duelling  in  great  occasions  which  were  formerly  so  frequent 

contempt.    I  did  not  deem  it  necessary  to  in  Washington  :  "  I  understand  there  is 

say  that  he  had  also  a  high  moral  and  reli-  a  man  here  from  Missouri,  a  Colonel  S., 

gious  disapprobation  of  it.   As  a  specimen  who  means  to  have  a  fight  with  Mr.  Ben- 

of  the  mode  in  which  he  was  accustomed  ton,  and,  if  Mr.  Benton  will  not  have  a  reg- 

to  ridicule  it,  among  his  friends,  the  fol-  ular  duel,  intends  to  fight  him  exparte." — 

lowing  piece  of  drollery  may  be  found  in  a  (Jan.  15, 1836.    Correspondence,  ii.,  17.) 


156  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VII. 

much  that  I  did  not  leave  Georgetown  with  you  this  morning.  I  have 
just  dined  where  you  breakfasted  this  morning,  with  a  most  pleasant 
party.  That  reflection  seems  to  add  to  the  uncomfortable  feeling  of 
solitariness  that  now  assails  me.  Below  you  have  the  'copy'  of  the 
paper  which  you  desired  me  to  forward  to  you.  Accept  my  acknowledg 
ments  for  the  terms  in  which  that  request  is  made,  and  believe  me,  with 
very  high  respect  and  regard, 

"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"  JOHN  RANDOLPH,  of  Roanoke." 

The  session  of  Congress  terminated  on  the  30th  of  April, 
1816.  Before  it  ended,  Mr.  "Webster  had  decided  upon  a  very 
important  change  in  his  own  life  and  position  ;  upon  no  less  a 
change  than  to  remove  from  his  native  State  and  to  retire  from 
public  life.  He  was  now  thirty-four.  He  had  lived  in  Ports 
mouth  nine  years,  in  happiness  and  success.  He  had  risen  to  a 
position  of  great  distinction  and  usefulness,  for  so  young  a 
man,  and  all  that  New  Hampshire  could  bestow  upon  him  was 
doubtless  within  his  reach.  But  in  his  profession  the  State 
of  his  birth  had  not  given  him,  and  could  not  give  him,  the 
field  which  his  talents  and  the  wants  of  his  increasing  family 
required.  His  local  practice  in  New  Hampshire  had  never 
been  worth  more  than  two  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  it  was 
scarcely  capable  of  being  made  to  yield  a  larger  income.  The 
loss  of  all  his  property  by  the  fire  of  1813  had  made  it  neces 
sary  for  him  to  seek  larger  resources.  Whether  he  looked  for 
still  higher  distinction  in  the  political  world,  at  some  future 
time,  or  meant  never  to  return  to  it,  I  do  not  know ;  but  I  am 
satisfied  that  at  this  period  he  had  not  an  absorbing  taste  for 
public  life,  or  a  fixed  political  ambition.  At  all  events,  he 
appears  to  have  determined  to  pass  some  years  in  exclusive 
devotion  to  his  profession,  and  he  therefore  looked  about  for 
the  best  position  for  this  important  object.  He  hesitated 
between  the  cities  of  New  York,  Albany,  and  Boston ;  but  he 
finally  chose  the  latter;  and,  having  made  his  decision,  he 
proceeded  immediately  to  carry  it  out.  In  June  (1816),  he 
went  there  with  Mrs.  Webster,  to  select  a  house,  and  in 
August  he  removed  with  his  family.1 

1  The  housein  which  he  first  resided  in  northwest  of  the  State-House.  It  is  still 
Boston  was  on  Mt.  Vernon  Street,  at  the  standing,  just  as  it  was  when  he  entered 
summit  of  Beacon  Hill,  and  a  few  rods  it  more  than  fifty  years  ago. 


1816.1  DEATH  OF  LITTLE  GRACE.  157 


CHAPTEE   YIII. 
1816-1819. 

CONGRESS    IN   1816-'17 DEATH    OF    LITTLE    GRACE RETIRES    FROM 

PUBLIC    LIFE BIRTH    OF    HIS    DAUGHTER    JULIA POSITION    AT 

THE   BOSTON    BAR SOCIAL   LIFE DARTMOUTH   COLLEGE   CASE 

ROBBERY   OF   MAJOR   GOODRIDGE. 

AT  the  time  when  Mr.  "Webster  took  up  his  residence  in 
Boston,  he  had  numerous  engagements  in  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States,  and,  as  the  full  term  for  which  he 
had  been  reflected  as  a  member  of  Congress  from  New  Hamp 
shire  had  not  expired,  he  went  again  to  "Washington,  in  De 
cember,  1816,  accompanied  by  Mrs.  Webster.  He  took  some 
part  in  the  proceedings  of  the  session  until  the  first  week  in 
January,  when  the  illness  of  their  daughter  again  brought 
the  parents  home.  This  child,  always  precocious  and  always 
delicate,  was  now  to  be  taken  from  them.  She  had  been  de 
clining  for  some  time,  and  was  at  length  pronounced  by  the 
physicians  to  be  in  a  consumption.  I  borrow  the  words  of 
Mrs.  Lee,  who  was  rarely  absent  when  sorrow  came  near  to 
those  whom  she  so  loved  and  honored  : l 

"  I  can  hardly  trust  myself  to  speak  of  this  child,  so  little  to  be  relied 
on  are  the  reports  of  precocious  children.  But  as  I  recall  some  of  the 
peculiarities  of  this  little  girl,  she  certainly  appears,  at  three  and  four 

1  The  death  of  this  child  occurred  in  Mr.  Webster's,  died  in  1836.  Mr.  Web- 
January,  1817.  A  singular  fatality  seemed  ster's  eldest  grand-daughter,  the  second 
to  attend  the  name  of  Grace  Webster.  A  child  of  his  son  Fletcher,  also  bore  the 
daughter  of  Mr.  Everett,  to  whom  this  name  of  Grace,  and  died  in  1844,  at  nearly 
name  was  given,  a  precocious  child,  like  the  same  age  with  the  first  one  of  the  name 


158  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  VIII. 

years  old,  wonderfully  intelligent,  and  a  most  agreeable  companion.  There 
was  no  one  so  much  in  demand  as  the  little  Grace — her  mother's  friends 
constantly  sending  for  her,  and  delighting  themselves  with  her  sweet  sim 
plicity  ;  and,  if  such  an  expression  can  be  allowed,  her  infantile  sagacity. 
Her  young  soul  seemed  to  dwell  very  near  the  Author  of  her  being.  Her 
mother  once  said  to  a  friend,  '  I  wish  I  could  feel  the  presence  of  God  as 
little  Grace  seems  to  feel  it.'  Not  only  did  '  heaven  lie  about  her  in  her 
infancy,'  but  she  knew  that  God  was  always  near  her.  Another  peculiarity 
was  the  tenderness  she  felt  for  the  poor  and  unhappy.  Beggars  were  fre 
quent  at  this  time.  There  were  few  relief  societies,  and  begging  from  door 
to  door  was  not  forbidden.  Grace  would  never  consent  that  an  asker  of 
charity  should  be  sent  away  empty.  She  would  bring  them  herself  into 
the  house,  see  that  their  wants  were  supplied,  comfort  them  with  the 
ministration  of  her  own  little  hands,  and  the  tender  compassion  of  her 
large  eyes.  If  her  mother  ever  refused,  those  eyes  would  fill  with  tears, 
and  she  would  urge  their  requests  so  perseveringly,  that  there  was  no 
resisting  her. 

"  But  God's  hand  soon  beckoned  her  away.  Her  parents  had  left 
Portsmouth  for  their  residence  in  Boston,  and  Mr.  Webster  had  gone  the 
second  time  from  New  Hampshire  to  serve  a  session  in  Congress,  when  that 
insidious  disease,  to  which  delicate  organizations  so  often  become  a  prey, 
began  to  impair  the  health  of  the  little  Grace.  The  progress  of  the  disease 
was  so  rapid,  that  her  parents  had  only  time  to  hasten  from  Washington 
to  their  house  in  Boston,  where  their  child,  whose  short  life  had  been 
lived,  as  it  were,  on  the  threshold  of  heaven,  passed  with  gentle  and  pain 
less  steps  within  the  veil  which  hides  from  us  the  great  mysteries  of  the 
future.  Grace  woke  from  a  sweet  sleep,  and  asked  for  her  father.  He 
was  instantly  called,  and,  placing  his  arm  beneath  her,  he  drew  her 
toward  him,  when  a  singular  smile  of  love  and  sweetness  passed  over  her 
countenance,  and  her  life  was  gone.  Mr.  Webster  turned  away  from  the 
bed,  and  great  tears  coursed  down  his  cheeks.  I  have  three  times  seen 
this  great  man  weep  convulsively.  Another  time  was  when  death  de 
prived  him  of  that  brother,  so  tenderly  loved,  with  whom,  as  we  learn 
from  the  Autobiography,  and  from  his  own  lips,  there  was  so  close  a 
union,  that,  till  both  of  them  had  families,  which  drew  them  from  each 
other,  there  had  been  between  them  but  one  aim,  one  purse,  one  welfare, 
and  one  hope." 

Mr.  Webster  went  again  to  Washington,  immediately  after 
the  burial  of  his  child,  and  confined  himself  almost  exclusively 
to  his  duties  in  the  Supreme  Court. 

At  this   session,  Mr.    Calhoun  brought  forward  his  plan, 
which  was  intended  to  lay  the  foundation  for  a  general  system . 
of"  internal  improvements,"  by  setting  apart  the  bonus  and  divi 
dends  to  be  derived  from  the  United  States  Bank,  as  a  perma- 


1817.]  PROFESSIONAL  LIFE  IX  BOSTON.  159 

nent  fund  for  that  purpose ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  he  argued 
elaborately  in  support  of  the  constitutional  power  of  Congress 
to  make  appropriations  for  such  objects.  Mr.  "Webster  voted 
for  the  bill  on  its  passage.  It  was  returned  by  President  Madi 
son  without  his  approval ;  the  ground  of  the  "  veto"  being  that 
the  power  is  not  expressly  given  in  the  Constitution,  and  can 
not  be  deduced  from  any  part  of  it  without  an  inadmissible 
latitude  of  construction,  and  a  reliance  on  insufficient  prece 
dents.  Mr.  "Webster  examined  the  whole  subject  with  care, 
for  the  purpose  of  forming  his  own  opinions  upon  it,  al 
though  he  does  not  appear  to  have  taken  any  part  in  its  pub 
lic  discussion  at  this  time.  He  reached  the  conclusion  that 
Congress  has  power  to  accomplish  or  to  aid  in  accomplish 
ing  the  objects  which  have  been  commonly  designated  in  our 
legislative  history  as  "  internal  improvements  ; "  a  conclusion 
which  was  sufficiently  manifested  by  his  final  vote  sustaining 
Mr.  Calhoun's  bill  against  the  "  veto  "  of  the  President.  The 
measure  failed  to  receive  the  requisite  constitutional  vote.1 

The  session  of  Congress  was  terminated  on  the  3d  of 
March,  1817 ;  and  with  it  ended  Mr.  "Webster's  connection,  for 
the  present,  with  public  affairs.  As  soon  as  the  Supreme  Court 
had  risen,  he  returned  to  Boston. 

Released  from  all  public  cares,  he  now  began  a  career  of 
great  professional  distinction.  Business  of  the  most  important 
character  flowed  in  upon  him,  from  the  natural  influence  of  his 
high  reputation,  of  his  diligence  and  learning,  of  his  great  pow 
ers  as  an  advocate,  and  his  many  personal  accomplishments. 
The  position  which  he  at  once  occupied  at  the  Boston  bar 
was  that  of  an  equal  and  a  competitor  with  the  oldest  and  most 
eminent  of  its  members.  In  a  short  time  he  was  in  the  receipt 
of  a  very  large  professional  income.9  Of  his  domestic  and  so- 

1  See  the  account  given  by  Mr.  Web-  and  as  nearly  all  lawyers,  who  practise 
ster,  in  his  second  speech  on  Foot's  reso-  much  as  advocates  and  counsellors,  re- 
lution,  of  the  formation  of  his  opinions  ceive  more  than  finds  its  way  into  their 
and  the  shaping  of  his  political  course,  account  -  books,  unless  they  are    kept 
on   this  and  other  constitutional    ques-  with  great  accuracy,  I  am  satisfied  that 
tions,  in  1816,  "  Teucro  duce." — (Works,  his  income,  from  1818  until  he  again  en- 
iii.,  297.)  tered  Congress  in  1823,  could  not  have 

2  Mr.   Webster's   fee-book   from  Au-  been,   on  an  average,   much   less   than 
gust,  1818,  to   August,   1819,  foots   up  $20,000  a  year.     The  customary  fees  of 
$15,181.    But  as  he  is  known  not  to  have  such  counsel   at  that  time  were  about 
been  very  careful  in  keeping  accounts,  one-half  of  what  they  are  now. 


160  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VIII. 

cial  life,  during  this  period  of  his  retirement  from  Congress, 
there  are  some  interesting  sketches  by  Mrs.  Lee  and  Mr.  Tick- 
nor,  which  will  find  their  appropriate  place  here,  before  I  com 
mence  the  description  of  the  intellectual  labors  with  which  this 
period  was  filled.  Mrs.  Lee  writes : 

"  Mr.  Webster  says  in  his  Autobiography,  that  after  he  had  finished  his 
session  in  Congress  from  New  Hampshire,  he  came  to  Boston  and  gave 
himself  with  diligence  to  the  business  of  his  profession. 

"  He  was  now  thirty-five  years  old,  and  certainly  in  the  perfection  of 
all  the  powers  of  body  and  mind.  The  majestic  beauty  of  his  countenance 
was  never  more  striking  than  at  this  period.  There  is  a  miniature  taken 
at  this  time,  which  gives  a  most  agreeable  impression  of  his  features,  but 
which  those  who  knew  him  in  the  later  years  of  his  life  would  hardly 
accept  as  a  perfect  likeness.  The  noble  expansive  brow  and  deep-set,  mel 
ancholy  eyes  do  justice  to  those  features ;  but  the  tender,  flexible  lips, 
although  expressing  the  sweetness  of  his  character  at  that  period  of  his 
life,  have  not  the  expression  of  intense  firmness  which  afterward  gave  such 
character  to  his  countenance. 

"  As  I  had  the  privilege  of  being  often  a  visitor  in  his  family,  a  recapit 
ulation  of  the  course  of  his  every-day  life  may  be  more  interesting  to  you 
than  any  thing  else. 

"Mr.  Webster  was  always  an  early  riser.  There  is  an  eloquent  letter 
which  expresses  his  true  feeling  upon  the  influence  of  the  morning  hours. 
Like  most  of  the  great  and  good  people  we  read  of,  the  hours  of  the 
early  morning  were  [to  him]  the  most  cheerful  of  the  day.  The  drowsy 
in  his  own  house  were  awoke  by  his  joyous  voice  singing  some  cheerful 
carol,  such  as, 

'  The  east  is  bright  with  morning  light, 
Uprose  the  king  of  men  with  speed,'  etc. 

"  At  breakfast,  before  the  cares  of  business  began,  he  was  cheerful  but 
thoughtful,  courteous  and  genial  toward  every  one ;  listening  to  the  prat 
tle  of  the  children,  and  kindly  attentive  to  all  their  little  requests.  When 
he  returned,  at  two  or  three  o'clock,  weary  from  the  courts,  or  from  his 
office,  the  promptly  ready  service  of  Hannah,  a  woman  who  had  been  in 
his  family  many  years,  was  always  welcome.  She  knew  the  sound  of  the 
door  when  opened  by  Mr.  Webster,  and  it  was  scarcely  closed  before  she 
was  at  his  side.  He  was  dependent  upon  services  prompted  by  affection, 
and  loved  those  spontaneous  offerings  which  came  from  the  heart. 

"  After  dinner,  Mr.  Webster  would  throw  himself  upon  the  sofa,  and 
then  was  seen  the  truly  electrical  attraction  of  his  character.  Every  person 
in  the  room  was  drawn  immediately  into  his  sphere.  The  children  squeez 
ing  themselves  into  all  possible  places  and  postures  upon  the  sofa,  in  order 
to  be  close  to  him ;  Mrs.  Webster  sitting  by  his  side,  and  the  friend  in 
the  house  or  social  visitor,  only  too  happy  to  join  in  the  circle.  All  this 


1819.]  SOCIAL  LIFE  IN  BOSTON.  161 

was  not  from  invitation  to  the  children,  he  did  nothing  to  amuse  them,  he 
told  them  no  stories ;  it  was  the  irresistible  attraction  of  his  character,  the 
charm  of  his  illumined  countenance,  from  which  beamed  indulgence  and 
kindness  to  every  one  of  his  family.  In  the  evening,  if  visitors  came  in, 
Mr.  Webster  was  too  much  exhausted  to  take  a  very  active  part  in  conver 
sation.  He  had  done  a  large  amount  of  work  before  others  were  awake  in 
the  morning,  and  in  the  evening  he  was  ready  for  that  sweet  sleep  which 
1  God  gives  to  His  beloved.'  " 

In  January,  1818,  Julia,  the  only  daughter  of  Mr.  Webster 
who  lived  to  the  age  of  womanhood,  was  born  in  Boston,  in 
the  house  on  Mt.  Yernon  Street  which  he  first  occupied  in  that 
town.  Of  his  life  at  this  time,  Mr.  Ticknor  observes : 

"  Soon  after  I  returned  from  Washington,  in  1815,  I  went  to  Europe, 
and  did  not  come  back  till  1819.  Mr.  Webster  was  then  living  in  Boston 
in  Mt.  Vernon  Street.  Two  days  after  I  arrived,  I  met  him  at  dinner  at 
Mr.  Isaac  P.  Davis's,  who  then  lived  in  the  Wheeler  House  in  Boylston 
Street.  Judge  Story,  Mr.  George  Blake,  Mr.  Willian  Sullivan,  and  a  few 
others,  made  the  party.  Such  a  party  could  not  have  sat  down  together 
at  a  private  table  when  I  left  home.  It  was  what  was  called  '  the  era  of 
good  feelings.'  Mr.  Webster  had  been  very  instrumental  in  producing  this 
state  of  things  in  the  country.  Mr.  John  Lowell,  in  the  summer  of  1817, 
told  me,  in  Paris,  that  Mr.  Webster,  in  a  private  visit  to  Mr.  Monroe,  just 
before  leaving  Washington,  when  he  ceased  to  be  a  member  of  Congress, 
asked  the  President  to  make  a  visit  to  the  North.  The  President  objected, 
on  the  ground  that  a  person  of  his  political  opinions  would  be  very  un 
welcome  there.  Mr.  Webster  replied  that  he  thought  it  would  be  better 
if  party  feeling  were  diminished  in  the  United  States,  and  that  this  was  a 
favorable  opportunity  to  diminish  it — he  believed  that  the  President  would 
be  kindly  received  without  distinction  of  party,  and  that  such  a  circum 
stance  would  tend  much  to  allay  all  political  bitterness.  '  The  country,' 
he  said,  '  was  much  too  busy  and  too  eager  in  its  prosperity,  to  give  much 
time  to  quarrelling  about  things  chiefly  bygone.'  They  had  much  con 
versation  on  the  subject.  Mr.  Webster  told  the  President  that  he  thought 
he  could  venture  to  speak  freely,  as  he  had  already  left  Congress,  and 
should  in  future  give  his  attention  to  his  profession  and  private  affairs. 
Mr.  Monroe  thanked  him,  and  said  he  would  consider  the  matter.  The 
result  was,  President  Monroe's  well-known  journey  to  the  North. 

"  On  relating  the  conversation  with  Mr.  Lowell  to  Mr.  Mason  some  years 
afterward,  he  told  me  that  he  was  aware  at  the  time  of  Mr.  Webster's 
course  and  influence  in  the  matter,  and  that  at  his  (Mr.  Webster's)  instance 
he  had  personally  invited  Mr.  Monroe  to  visit  him  at  Portsmouth,  and  did 
what  he  could  to  make  his  tour  agreeable  and  useful. 

"  At  the  dinner  at  Mr.  Davis's,  Mr.  Webster  talked  a  good  deal  about 
Europe — all  I  remember  of  his  conversation  is,  that  he  had  a  very  accu- 
12 


162  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VIIL 

rate  idea  of  the  difference  between  a  European  and  an  American  village — 
of  the  results  of  building  with  destructible  materials,  like  pine  wood,  or  of 
more  lasting  materials  like  brick  and  stone,  and  of  the  effect  upon  the 
character  of  a  people,  which  followed  from  having  the  same  family  for 
successive  generations  live  in  the  same  place,  in  narrowing  their  minds." 

The  period  which  is  now  to  be  described  extends  from  the 
summer  of  1817  to  Mr.  "Webster's  return  to  Congress,  in  1823, 
as  a  Representative  from  Massachusetts.  It  was  filled  with  an 
extraordinary  amount  of  intellectual  activity.  It  comprehends 
the  celebrated  argument  in  the  Dartmouth  College  case,  in  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  which  raised  him  imme 
diately  to  the  very  highest  rank  as  a  constitutional  lawyer  ;  his 
service  in  the  constitutional  convention  of  Massachusetts,  in 
which  his  powers  as  a  statesman,  a  legislator,  and  a  debater, 
were  displayed  with  singular  brilliancy,  and  employed  with 
singular  usefulness ;  his  discourse  at  Plymouth,  which  placed 
him  on  the  list  of  the  world's  great  orators  ;  and  a  vast  variety 
of  professional  performances,  in  every  department  of  jurispru 
dence,  and  embracing  nearly  every  phase  of  human  affairs  that 
can  come  within  the  cognizance  of  courts  of  justice.  In  order 
to  give  the  reader  an  adequate  idea  of  the  amount  and  char 
acter  of  the  intellectual  labor  that  was  crowded  into  these  six 
or  seven  years  of  the  prime  of  Mr.  Webster's  life,  perhaps  the 
best  mode  will  be  to  describe  separately  what  belongs  to  his 
professional  and  what  relates  to  his  other  employments. 

The  professional  reader,  who  is  curious  to  measure  the 
extent  of  Mr.  Webster's  practice  during  the  period  to  which  I 
now  refer,  will  find  the  number  of  causes  which  he  argued,  in 
franc,  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  Circuit 
Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  First  Circuit,  and  in  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  from  1817  to  1823,  by 
consulting  the  official  reports  of  those  courts  for  that  period.1 
These  show  a  very  large  employment  as  leading  counsel  in 
those  three  tribunals  ;  but,  of  course,  they  contain  no  record  of 
the  nisiprius  business  in  which  he  must  have  been  engaged, 
in  some  degree  commensurate  with  his  employment  as  an 

1  The  volumes  of  the  "  Massachusetts  "  Gallison's  Reports,"  and  the  first  and 

Reports,"  from  the  13th  to  the  17th,  in-  second   of  "  Mason's  Reports,"  and  of 

elusive,  together  with  the  first  volume  "  Wheaton's  Reports,"  cover  the  period 

of  "  Pickering's  Reports,"  the  second  of  referred  to. 


1816.]  DARTMOUTH   COLLEGE   CASE.  163 

advocate  before  the  courts  in  ~banc.  All  this  mass  of  litigation, 
although  leaving  its  impress  on  the  jurisprudence  of  the  coun 
try — as  every  well-debated  question  does,  under  a  system  of  law 
that  is  founded  and  depends  upon  recorded  precedents — was, 
with  one  great  exception,  unconnected  with  the  relations  of  the 
States  of  this  Union  to  the  restraining  authority  and  supremacy 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Such  a  question  was 
wanting  to  the  complete  development  of  Mr.  Webster's  power 
and  reputation  as  a  lawyer,  and  it  came  from  an  occasion  and 
a  source  eminently  adapted  to  call  forth  his  abilities,  and  to 
enlist  his  strongest  interest. 

Dartmouth  College,  at  which,  as  we  have  seen,  he  received 
his  academic  education,  was  originally  a  charity  school  for  the 
instruction  of  Indians  in  the  Christian  religion,  founded  by  the 
Rev.  Eleazer  Wheelock,  D.  D.,  about  the  year  1754,  at  Leb 
anon,  in  Connecticut.  Its  success  led  Dr.  Wheelock  to  solicit 
private  subscriptions  in  England,  'for  the  purpose  of  enlarging 
it,  and  of  extending  its  benefits  to  English  colonists.  Funds 
having  been  obtained  for  this  purpose  from  various  contributors, 
among  whom  the  Earl  of  Dartmouth,  Secretary  for  the  Colonies, 
was  a  large  donor,  Dr.  "Wheelock  constituted  that  nobleman  and 
other  persons  trustees,  with  authority  to  fix  the  site  of  the  col 
lege.  The  place  selected  was  on  the  Connecticut  River,  at 
what  is  now  the  town  of  Hanover,  in  New  Hampshire,  where 
large  donations  of  land  were  made  by  the  neighboring  pro 
prietors.  A  charter  for  the  college  was  obtained  from  the 
crown,  in  1Y69,  creating  it  a  perpetual  corporation.  The 
charter  recognized  Dr.  Wheelock  as  founder,  appointed  him 
to  be  the  president,  and  empowered  him  to  name  his  suc 
cessor,  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  trustees ;  to  whom  was 
also  imparted  the  power  of  filling  vacancies  in  their  own 
body,  and  of  making  laws  and  ordinances  for  the  government 
of  the  college,  not  repugnant  to  the  laws  of  Great  Britain  or 
of  the  province,  and  not  excluding  any  person  on  account  of 
his  religious  belief. 

Under  this  charter,  Dartmouth  College  had  always  existed, 
unquestioned  and  undisturbed  in  its  rights  as  a  corporation, 
down  to  the  Revolution,  and  subsequently  until  the  year  1815. 
Whether  from  political  or  personal  motives  springing  up  out- 


164  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  VIII. 

side  of  the  board  of  trustees  of  that  period,  or  from  some  colli 
sions  arising  within  the  body  itself,  it  appears  that,  before  Mr. 
Webster  left  the  State  of  New  Hampshire,  legislative  interfer 
ence  with  the  chartered  rights  of  this  college  was  threatened  ; 
and  its  president,  Dr.  Brown,  was  anxious  to  secure  his  influ 
ence  and  services.  Mr.  Webster,  however,  declined  to  take 
any  part  in  these  disputes  as  they  then  stood.  But,  in  the 
following  year  (1816),  the  difficulties,  which  had  become  mixed 
with  political  interests,  culminated  in  a  direct  interference  by 
the  Legislature.  In  that  year  an  act  was  passed,  changing  the 
corporate  name  from  "  The  Trustees  of  Dartmouth  College  " 
to  "  The  Trustees  of  Dartmouth  University ; "  enlarging  the 
number  of  trustees,  vesting  the  appointment  of  some  of  them 
in  the  political  bodies  of  the  State,  and  otherwise  modifying 
the  ancient  rights  of  the  corporation  as  they  existed  under 
its  charter  derived  from  the  crown  of  England. 

A  majority  of  the  existing  trustees  refused  to  accept  or  to 
be  bound  by  this  act,  and  brought  an  action  of  trover  in  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  State,  in  the  name  of  the  old  corporation, 
against  a  gentleman,  Mr.  W.  H.  Woodward,  who  was  in  posses 
sion  of  the  college  seal  and  other  effects,  and  who  claimed  to 
hold  them  as  one  of  the  officers  of  the  newly-created  "  uni 
versity."  The  argument  in  this  case  was  made  in  the  State 
court,  for  the  college,  by  Mr.  Mason  and  Mr.  Jeremiah  Smith, 
assisted  by  Mr.  Webster.  The  decision  was  against  the  claim 
of  the  college.  It  was  then  determined  to  remove  the  cause,  by 
writ  of  error,  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  under 
the  provisions  of  the  Federal  Constitution  and  laws  creat 
ing  in  that  tribunal  an  appellate  jurisdiction  in  cases  which, 
although  originating  in  a  State  court,  involve  the  construction 
and  operation  of  the  Federal  Constitution.  This  was  supposed 
to  be  such  a  case,  because  it  was  claimed  by  the  college  that  the 
act  of  the  Legislature,  modifying  its  charter,  impaired  the  obli 
gation  of  a  contract;  an  exercise  of  power  which  the  Constitu 
tion  of  the  United  States  prohibits  to  the  Legislature  of  a  State. 

As  soon  as  it  was  known  in  New  Hampshire  that  this  very 
interesting  cause  was  to  come  before  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  the  friends  of  the  college,  including  their  other 
counsel  in  the  State  court,  unanimously  desired  to  have  it  com- 


1818.]  DARTMOUTH  COLLEGE  CASE.  165 

initted  to  the  hands  of  Mr.  Webster.  He  consented  to  take 
charge  of  it  in  the  autumn  of  1817 ;  but  the  cause  was  not 
argued  at  Washington  until  February,  1818.  In  the  interval, 
Mr.  Webster  gave  directions  relating  to  the  form  and  contents 
of  the  special  verdict,  which  was  to  be  carried  up  by  the  writ 
of  error,  and  had  several  conferences  with  the  gentlemen  who 
had  argued  for  the  college  with  very  great  learning  and  ability 
in  the  State  court.  He  was  left  entirely  at  liberty  to  appoint 
his  associate  counsel,  and  he  selected  Joseph  Hopkinson,  of 
Philadelphia. 

To  those  who  might  then  have  been,  or  to  those  who  may 
now  be  uninitiated  in  the  relations  of  our  complex  system  of 
Government,  this  dispute  whether  the  trustees  of  the  college 
should  be  one  or  another  set  of  persons  at  the  command  of  the 
State  ;  whether  it  should  be  called  by  its  ancient  name,  or  by  a 
new  name  affixed  to  it  by  the  legislative  power,  might  seem  a 
rather  trivial  subject  of  litigation,  not  likely  to  involve  prin 
ciples  extending  into  the  indefinite  future,  and  reaching  to  the 
very  foundations  of  the  rights  of  property.  Such,  however,  was 
the  character  of  this  celebrated  cause ;  and,  in  order  to  exhibit 
what  our  constitutional  jurisprudence  owes  to  the  advocate  who 
carried  this  case  triumphantly  through  its  final  arbitrament,  it 
is  necessary  to  refer  to  the  provision  of  the  Constitution  which 
it  became  his  duty  to  expound,  and  to  the  development  and  ap 
plication  which  it  had  previously  received. 

The  framers  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  moved 
chiefly  by  the  mischiefs  created  by  the  preceding  legislation  of 
the  States,  which  had  made  serious  encroachments  on  the  rights 
of  property,  inserted  a  clause  in  that  instrument  which  declared 
that  "  no  State  shall  pass  any  expost-facto  law,  or  law  impair 
ing  the  obligation  of  contracts."  The  first  branch  of  this  clause 
had  always  been  understood  to  relate  to  criminal  legislation, 
the  second  to  legislation  affecting  civil  rights.  But,  before  the 
case  of  Dartmouth  College  vs.  Woodward  occurred,  there  had 
been  no  judicial  decisions  respecting  the  meaning  and  scope  of 
the  restraint  in  regard  to  contracts,  excepting  that  it  had  more 
than  once  been  determined  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  that  a  grant  of  lands  made  by  a  State  is  a  contract  within 
the  protection  of  this  provision,  and  is,  therefore,  irrevocable. 


166  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  VIII. 

These  decisions,  however,  could  go  but  little  way  toward  the 
solution  of  the  questions  involved  in  the  case  of  the  college. 
They  did,  indeed,  establish  the  principle  that  contracts  of  the 
State  itself  are  beyond  the  reach  of  subsequent  legislation, 
equally  with  contracts  between  individuals ;  and  that  there  are 
grants  of  a  State  which  are  contracts.  But  this  college  stood 
upon  a  charter  granted  by  the  crown  of  England  before  the 
American  Revolution.  "Was  the  State  of  JSTew  Hampshire — a 
sovereign  in  all  respects  after  the  Revolution,  and  remaining 
one  after  the  Federal  Constitution,  excepting  in  those  respects 
in  which  it  had  subjected  its  sovereignty  to  the  restraints  of 
that  instrument — bound  by  the  contracts  of  the  English  crown  ? 
Is  the  grant  of  a  charter  of  incorporation  a  contract  between 
the  sovereign  power  and  those  on  whom  the  charter  is  be 
stowed  ?  If  an  act  of  incorporation  is  a  contract,  is  it  so  in  any 
case  but  that  of  a  private  corporation  ?  "Was  this  college,  which 
was  an  institution  of  learning,  established  for  the  promotion  of 
education,  a  private  corporation,  or  was  it  one  of  those  instru 
ments  of  government  which  are  at  all  times  under  the  control 
and  subject  to  the  direction  of  the  legislative  power  ?  All  these 
questions  were  involved  in  the  inquiry  whether  the  legislative 
power  of  the  State  had  been  so  restrained  by  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  that  it  could  not  alter  the  charter  of  this 
institution,  against  the  will  of  the  trustees,  without  impairing 
the  obligation  of  a  contract.  If  this  inquiry  were  to  receive 
an  affirmative  answer,  the  constitutional  jurisprudence  of  the 
United  States  would  embrace  a  principle  of  the  utmost  impor 
tance  to  every  similar  institution  of  learning,  and  to  every  incor 
poration  then  existing,  or  thereafter  to  exist,  not  belonging  to 
the  machinery  of  government  as  a  political  instrument. 

The  State  court  of  ISTew  Hampshire,  in  deciding  this  case, 
had  assumed  that  the  college  was  a  public  corporation,  and  on 
that  basis  had  rested  their  judgment ;  which  was,  that  between 
the  State  and  its  public  corporations  there  is  no  contract  which 
the  State  cannot  regulate,  alter,  or  annul  at  pleasure.  Mr. 
Webster  had  to  overthrow  this  fundamental  position.  If  he 
could  show  that  this  college  was  a  private  eleemosynary  cor 
poration,  and  that  the  grant  of  the  right  to  be  a  corporation  of 
this  nature  is  a  contract  between  the  sovereign  power  and  those 


1818.]  DARTMOUTH  COLLEGE  CASE.  167 

who  devote  their  funds  to  the  charity,  and  take  the  incorpora 
tion  for  its  better  management,  he  could  bring  the  legislative 
interference  within  the  prohibition  of  the  Federal  Constitution. 

It  is  probable  that  there  was  no  lawyer  in  the  United  States 
at  that  moment  better  qualified  to  discuss  this  question  than 
Mr.  Webster.  He  had  been  from  a  very  early  period  in  his  life 
a  great  student  of  English  history,  and  he  was  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  principles  of  the  common  law.  The  question 
to  which  class  of  corporations — public  or  private — did  this  col 
lege  belong — the  critical  question  in  the  cause — was  one  to  be 
decided  on  the  principles  of  the  common  law,  as  the  governing 
body  of  jurisprudence  by  which  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  is  to  be  interpreted,  in  its  application  to  public  or  private 
rights.  It  affected,  too,  every  institution  of  learning  in  the 
country  that  had  been  similarly  endowed  and  founded ;  while 
the  particular  institution,  the  fate  of  which  was  at  stake  in  the 
cause,  was  one  which  the  strongest  sympathies  of  his  youth  and 
the  fullest  convictions  of  his  manhood  stimulated  him  to  pre 
serve  from  the  control  of  party  politics  and  the  mischiefs  of 
political  legislation.  Inspired  by  these  motives,  he  opened  the 
cause,  in  the  argument  of  which  all  that  is  preserved  is  con 
tained  in  the  fifth  volume  of  his  works ;  a  report  which  gives 
us  only  the  legal  reasoning  of  a  speech  that  was  undoubtedly  as 
remarkable  for  its  beauty,  pathos,  and  eloquence,  as  it  was  for 
its  logical  power  and  its  wealth  of  historical  and  juridical  illus 
tration. 

Its  important  positions,  stated  in  their  logical  order,  were 
these  :  1.  That  Dr.  Wheel ock  was  the  founder  of  this  college, 
and  as  such  entitled  by  law  to  be  visitor,  and  that  he  had 
assigned  all  the  visitatorial  powers  to  the  trustees.  2.  That 
the  charter  created  a  private  and  not  a  public  corporation,  to 
administer  a  charity,  in  the  administration  of  which  the  trustees 
had  a  property,  which  the  law  recognizes  as  such.  3.  That  the 
grant  of  such  a  charter  is  a  contract  between  the  sovereign 
power  and  its  successors  and  those  to  whom  it  is  granted  and 
their  successors.  4.  That  the  legislation  which  took  away  from 
the  trustees  the  right  to  exercise  the  powers  of  superintendence, 
visitation,  and  government,  and  transferred  them  to  another  set 
of  trustees,  impaired  the  obligation  of  that  contract.  The  argu- 


168  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VIII. 

ments  of  Mr.  Wirt,  then  Attorney-General  of  the  United  States, 
and  of  Mr.  Holmes,  for  the  defendants  in  error,  related  chiefly 
to  the  points  that  the  charter  was  not  a  contract,  but  a  mere 
appointment  to  office,  the  trustees  being  agents  of  government, 
and  the  property,  in  fact,  given  to  the  public ;  that  if  the 
charter  was  a  contract,  it  was  not  impaired  by  the  legislation, 
which  merely  gave  the  trustees  new  assistants ;  and  that  Dr. 
Wheelock  was  not  the  founder,  as  he  never  gave  any  thing. 
Mr.  Hopkinson  replied,  on  all  these  topics,  in  a  speech  of  much 
ability.  On  the  conclusion  of  the  argument,  the  Chief  Justice 
intimated  that  a  decision  was  not  to  be  expected  until  the  next 
term.  It  was  made  in  February,  1819,  fully  confirming  the 
grounds  on  which  Mr.  Webster  had  placed  the  cause.  From 
this  decision,  the  principle  in  our  constitutional  jurisprudence, 
which  regards  a  charter  of  a  private  corporation  as  a  contract, 
and  places  it  under  the  protection  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  takes  its  date.  To  Mr.  "Webster  belongs  the 
honor  of  having  produced  its  judicial  establishment. 

"We  look  back  upon  a  forensic  performance  like  this,  which 
was  followed  by  a  judgment  affirming  its  positions,  and  fixing 
them  among  the  foundations  of  our  law,  so  that  its  principles 
have  become  familiar  to  us,  as  if  the  conception  and  develop 
ment  of  the  subject  involved  less  reach  of  originality  and  less 
depth  of  research  and  force  of  reasoning  than  they  really  did. 
But  we  should  judge  of  the  advocate  on  these  critical  occasions, 
in  some  measure,  through  the  impressions  and  opinions  of  those 
who  heard  him,  and  who  stood  at  the  same  point  in  our  juridi 
cal  history  at  which  he  was  himself  placed.  What  they  re 
garded  as  a  very  high  intellectual  achievement,  advancing  the 
law  by  a  great  stride  toward  the  perfection  of  which  a  human 
and  an  artificial  system  of  social  rights  is  capable,  we  may  well 
accept  as  such  upon  their  testimony.  For,  while  we  observe 
the  excitation  of  feeling  produced  by  the  immediate  influence 
of  the  speech  on  those  who  heard  it,  we  must  concede  to  con 
temporaries  a  superior  appreciation  of  the  difficulties  that  were 
to  be  encountered.  Tradition,  if  it  has  not  always  placed  this 
performance  at  the  very  head  of  all  Mr.  Webster's  forensic 
efforts,  has  certainly,  by  the  universal  testimony  of  those  who 
heard  it,  regarded  it  as  one  that  immediately  impressed  the 


1818.]  DARTMOUTH  COLLEGE  CASE.  169 

highest  intellect  of  the  nation  with  an  adequate  sense  of  his 
power.  But,  among  all  the  admiration  that  it  called  forth^from 
those  who  were  present,  there  is  nothing  more  happy  or  more 
striking  than  what  was  said  by  Mr.  "Webster's  associate  in  the 
cause.  Writing  to  the  president  of  the  college,  after  the  judg 
ment  of  the  court  had  fully  sanctioned  the  arguments  of  its 
advocates,  and  placed  it  in  safety  for  all  future  time,  Mr.  Hop- 
kinson  modestly  disclaimed  for  himself  any  other  merit,  in  his 
reply  to  their  opponents,  than  that  of  having  followed  and 
enforced  the  positions  taken  by  Mr.  Webster  in  his  opening  of 
the  cause.  He  then  added,  "  I  would  have  an  inscription  over 
the  door  of  your  building :  '  FOUNDED  BY  ELEAZER  WHEELOCK, 

KEFOUNDED   BY   DANIEL   WEBSTER.'" 

The  most  vivid  description  that  is  extant  of  Mr.  Webster's 
manner  on  this  occasion,  was  given  by  a  gentleman,  who  was 
present,  to  Mr.  Choate,  in  1853.1  I  quote  it  entire: 

"Before  going  to  Washington,  which  I  did  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  hear 
ing  Mr.  Webster,  I  was  told  that,  in  arguing  the  case  at  Exeter,  New 
Hampshire,  he  had  left  the  whole  court-room  in  tears  at  the  conclusion  of 
his  speech.  This,  I  confess,  struck  me  unpleasantly — any  attempt  at  pathos 
on  a  purely  legal  question  like  this  seemed  hardly  in  good  taste.  On  my 
way  to  Washington,  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Webster.  We  were 
together  for  several  days  in  Philadelphia,  at  the  house  of  a  common  friend ; 
and,  as  the  college  question  was  one  of  deep  interest  to  literary  men,  we 
conversed  often  and  largely  on  the  subject.  As  he  dwelt  upon  the  leading 
points  of  the  case,  in  terms  so  calm,  simple,  and  precise,  I  said  to  myself 
more  than  once,  in  reference  to  the  story  I  had  heard,  *  Whatever  may 
have  seemed  appropriate  in  defending  the  college  at  home,  and  on  her  own 
ground,  there  will  be  no  appeal  to  the  feelings  of  Judge  Marshall  and  his 
associates  at  Washington.'  The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  held 
its  session,  that  winter,  in  a  mean  apartment  of  moderate  size — the  capitol 
not  having  been  rebuilt  after  its  destruction  in  1814.  The  audience,  when 
the  case  came  on,  was,  therefore,  small,  consisting  chiefly  of  legal  men,  the 
elite  of  the  profession  throughout  the  country.  Mr.  Webster  entered  upon 
his  argument  in  the  calm  tone  of  easy  and  dignified  conversation.  His 
matter  was  so  completely  at  his  command  that  he  scarcely  looked  at  his 
brief,  but  went  on  for  more  than  four  hours  with  a  statement  so  luminous, 
and  a  chain  of  reasoning  so  easy  to  be  understood,  and  yet  approaching  so 
nearly  to  absolute  demonstration,  that  he  seemed  to  carry  with  him  every 

1  Dr.  Chauncey  A.  Goodrich,  a  pro-  Choate  at  Dartmouth  College,  July  27, 
fessor  in  Yale  College.  See  the  eulogy  1853,  at  the  request  of  the  authorities 
on  Mr.  Webster,  pronounced  by  Mr.  and  the  students. 


170  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  YIIL 

man  of  his  audience  without  the  slightest  effort  or  uneasiness  on  either  side. 
It  was  hardly  eloquence,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term ;  it  was  pure  reason. 
Now  and  then,  for  a  sentence  or  two,  his  eye  flashed  and  his  voice  swelled 
into  a  bolder  note,  as  he  uttered  some  emphatic  thought ;  but  he  instantly 
fell  back  into  the  tone  of  earnest  conversation  which  ran  throughout  the 
great  body  of  the  speech.  A  single  circumstance  will  show  you  the  clear 
ness  and  absorbing  power  of  his  argument. 

"  I  observed  that  Judge  Story,  at  the  opening  of  the  case,  had  prepared 
himself,  pen  in  hand,  as  if  to  take  copious  minutes.  Hour  after  hour  I  saw 
him  fixed  in  the  same  attitude,  but,  so  far  as  I  could  perceive,  with  not  a 
note  on  his  paper.  The  argument  closed,  and  I  could  not  discover  that  he 
had  taken  a  single  note.  Others  around  me  remarked  the  same  thing,  and 
it  was  among  the  on  dits  of  Washington  that  a  friend  spoke  to  him  of  the 
fact  with  surprise,  when  the  judge  remarked,  '  Every  thing  was  so  clear, 
and  so  easy  to  remember,  that  not  a  note  seemed  necessary,  and,  in  fact,  I 
thought  little  or  nothing  about  my  notes.'  The  argument  ended,  Mr. 
Webster  stood  for  some  moments  silent  before  the  court,  while  every  eye 
was  fixed  intently  upon  him.  At  length,  addressing  the  Chief  Justice,  he 
proceeded  thus : 

'"This,  sir,  is  my  case.  It  is  the  case,  not  merely  of  that  humble 
institution,  it  is  the  case  of  every  college  in  our  land.  It  is  more.  It  is  the 
case  of  every  eleemosynary  institution  throughout  our  country — of  all 
those  great  charities  founded  by  the  piety  of  our  ancestors,  to  alleviate 
human  misery,  and  scatter  blessings  along  the  pathway  of  life.  It  is 
more !  It  is,  in  some  sense,  the  case  of  every  man  among  us  who  has 
property  of  which  he  may  be  stripped,  for  the  question  is  simply  this : 
Shall  our  State  Legislatures  be  allowed  to  take  that  which  is  not  their 
own,  to  turn  it  from  its  original  use,  and  apply  it  to  such  ends  or  purposes 
as  they  in  their  discretion  shall  see  fit  ? 

" '  Sir,  you  may  destroy  this  little  institution  ;  it  is  weak ;  it  is  in  your 
hands  !  I  know  it  is  one  of  the  lesser  lights  in  the  literary  horizon  of  our 
country.  You  may  put  it  out.  But,  if  you  do  so,  you  must  carry  through 
your  work!  You  must  extinguish,  one  after  another,  all  those  greater 
lights  of  science  which,  for  more  than  a  century,  have  thrown  their  radi 
ance  over  our  land ! 

"  *  It  is,  sir,  as  I  have  said,  a  small  college.  And  yet  there  are  those 
who  love  it — ' 

"  Here,  the  feelings  which  he  had  thus  far  succeeded  in  keeping  down, 
broke  forth.  His  lips  quivered  ;  his  firm  cheeks  trembled  with  emotion ; 
his  eyes  were  filled  with  tears,  his  voice  choked,  and  he  seemed  struggling 
to  the  utmost  simply  to  gain  that  mastery  over  himself  which  might  save 
him  from  an  unmanly  burst  of  feeling.  I  will  not  attempt  to  give  you  the 
few  broken  words  of  tenderness  in  which  he  went  on  to  speak  of  his  attach 
ment  to  the  college.  The  whole  seemed  to  be  mingled  throughout  with  the 
recollections  of  father,  mother,  brother,  and  all  the  privations  and  trials 


1817.]  ROBBERY  OF  MAJOR  GOODRIDGE.  171 

through  which  he  had  made  his  way  into  life.  Every  one  saw  that  it 
was  wholly  unpremeditated,  a  pressure  on  his  heart,  which  sought  relief 
in  words  and  tears. 

"  The  court-room  during  these  two  or  three  minutes  presented  an  ex 
traordinary  spectacle.  Chief-Justice  Marshall,  with  his  tall  and  gaunt 
figure  bent  over,  as  if  to  catch  the  slightest  whisper,  the  deep  furrows  of 
his  cheek  expanded  with  emotion,  and  his  eyes  suffused  with  tears ;  Mr. 
Justice  Washington  at  his  side,  with  his  small  and  emaciated  frame  and 
countenance  more  like  marble  than  I  ever  saw  on  any  other  human  being 
— leaning  forward  with  an  eager,  troubled  look ;  and  the  remainder  of  the 
court,  at  the  two  extremities,  pressing,  as  it  were,  toward  a  single  point, 
while  the  audience  below  were  wrapping  themselves  round  in  closer  folds 
beneath  the  bench,  to  catch  each  look  and  every  movement  of  the  speak 
er's  face.  If  a  painter  could  give  us  the  scene  on  canvas — those  forms  and 
countenances,  and  Daniel  Webster  as  he  there  stood  in  the  midst — it  would 
be  one  of  the  most  touching  pictures  in  the  history  of  eloquence.  One  thing 
it  taught  me,  that  the  pathetic  depends  not  merely  on  the  words  uttered, 
but  still  more  on  the  estimate  we  put  upon  him  who  utters  them.  There 
was  not  one  among  the  strong-minded  men  of  that  assembly,  who  could 
think  it  unmanly  to  weep,  when  he  saw  standing  before  him  the  man  who 
had  made  such  an  argument,  melted  into  the  tenderness  of  a  child. 

"  Mr.  Webster  Had  now  recovered  his  composure,  and,  fixing  his  keen 
eye  on  the  Chief  Justice,  said,  in  that  deep  tone  with  which  he  sometimes 
thrilled  the  heart  of  an  audience  : 

"  '  Sir,  I  know  not  how  others  may  feel '  (glancing  at  the  opponents  of 
the  college  before  him),  '  but,  for  myself,  when  I  see  my  Alma  Mater  sur 
rounded,  like  Caesar  in  the  senate-house,  by  those  who  are  reiterating 
stab  after  stab,  I  would  not,  for  this  right  hand,  have  her  to  turn  to  me, 
and  say,  Et  tu  quoque  mi  fill !  And  thou  too,  my  son  f ' 

"  He  sat  down.  There  was  a  deathlike  stillness  throughout  the  room 
for  some  moments ;  every  one  seemed  to  be  slowly  recovering  himself,  and 
coming  gradually  back  to  his  ordinary  range  of  thought  and  feeling." 

About  a  year  previous  to  this  argument  of  a  legal  and  con 
stitutional  question  of  the  highest  reach,  before  a  court  of  law, 
Mr.  Webster  was  employed  in  a  totally  different  sphere  of  the 
functions  of  an  advocate,  in  the  defence  of  two  persons  before  a 
jury,  indicted  under  circumstances  of  a  remarkable  character, 
whose  guilt  was  almost  unanimously  assumed  by  the  public, 
who  were  unquestionably  innocent,  and  whose  safety  depended 
upon  a  skilful  cross-examination  of  the  prosecutor,  and  a  discus 
sion  of  probabilities  upon  evidence.  I  allude  to  the  dramatic 
story  of  the  robbery  of  Major  Goodridge. 

Goodridge  was  a  person  of  previous  good  character  and  re- 


172  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  VIII. 

spectable  standing,  who  professed  to  have  been  robbed  of  a 
large  sum  of  money,  at  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  night  of  De 
cember  19,  1816,  on  the  road  between  Exeter  and  Newbury- 
port,  soon  after  passing  the  Essex  Merrimac  Bridge,  on  his 
way  from  New  Hampshire  into  Massachusetts.  Among  the 
proofs  of  the  robbery  was  a  pistol-shot  through  his  left  hand, 
received,  as  he  said,  before  the  robbers  pulled  him  from 
his  horse  ;  he  and  one  of  his  assailants  discharging  their 
pistols  at  each  other  on  the  same  instant.  He  was  then, 
according  to  his  account,  dragged  from  his  horse,  and  across 
a  fence  into  a  field,  robbed,  and  beaten  until  he  was  sense 
less.  On  his  recovery  he  went  back  to  the  toll-house  on 
the  bridge,  where  he  appeared  to  be  for  a  time  in  a  state  of 
delirium.  But  he  had  sufficient  self-possession  to  return  to  the 
place  of  the  robbery  with  some  persons  who  accompanied  him 
with  a  lantern,  where  his  watch,  papers,  and  other  articles 
were  found  scattered  on  the  ground.  On  the  following  day,  he 
went  to  Newburyport,  and  remained  there  ill,  a.t  intervals  in  a 
state  of  real  or  simulated  frenzy,  for  several  weeks.  Having 
regained  his  health,  he  set  about  the  discovery  of  the  robbers  ; 
and  so  general  was  the  sympathy  for  him  in  a  very  orderly 
community,  that  his  plans  were  aided  by  the  innocent  zeal  of 
nearly  the  whole  country-side.  His  first  charge  was  against 
the  Kennistons,  two  poor  men  who  dwelt  in  the  town  of  New 
Market,  New  Hampshire,  on  the  other  side  of  the  river.  In 
their  cellar  he  found  a  piece  of  gold,  which  he  identified  by  a 
mark  which  he  said  he  had  placed  on  all  his  money,  and  a  ten- 
dollar  note  which  he  also  identified  as  his  own.  The  Kennis 
tons  were  arrested,  examined,  and  held  for  trial.  He  next 
charged  the  toll-gatherer,  one  Pearson,  as  an  accomplice ;  and 
on  his  premises,  with  the  aid  of  a  witch-hazel  conjuror,  he  also 
found  some  of  his  gold  and  papers  in  which  it  had  been  wrapped. 
Pearson  was  arrested,  examined  before  two  magistrates,  and 
discharged.  He  then  complained  against  one  Taber,  a  person 
who  lived  in  Boston.  Finally,  he  followed  a  man  named  Jack- 
man  to  the  city  of  New  York,  in  whose  house  he  swore  that  he 
also  discovered  some  of  his  marked  wrappers.  The  machinery 
of  an  Executive  requisition  was  put  in  motion,  and  Jackman 
was  brought  into  Massachusetts  and  lodged  in  jail.  He  and 


1817.]  BOBBERY  OF  MAJOR  GOODRIDGE.  173 

Taber,  and  the  Kennistons,  were  then  indicted  for  the  robbery, 
in  the  county  of  Essex. 

So  cunningly  had  this  man  contrived  his  story  and  arranged 
his  proofs,  that  the  popular  belief  was  entirely  with  him.  The 
witch-hazel  part  of  his  evidence  probably  did  not  disincline 
the  populace  to  believe  him.  But  it  is  even  said  that  there 
were  few  members  of  the  county  bar  who  did  not  regard  the 
case  of  the  Kennistons  as  desperate.  There  were  some,  how 
ever,  who  believed  Goodridge's  story  to  be  false ;  and  these 
persons  sent  for  Mr.  Webster  to  undertake  the  defence  of  the 
accused.  The  indictment  against  Taber  was  nol.  prosed. 
That  against  the  Kennistons  came  on  for  trial  at  Ipswich,  in 
April,  1817.  They  had  nothing  on  which  to  rely  but  their 
previous  good  character,  the  negative  fact  that  since  the  sup 
posed  robbery  they  had  not  passed  any  money  or  been  seen  to 
have  any,  and  the  improbabilities  which  their  advocate  could 
develop  in  the  story  of  Goodridge.  The  theory  of  the  defence 
was,  that  Goodridge  was  his  own  robber,  and  had  fired  the 
pistol-shot  through  his  own  hand. 

In  the  power  of  cross-examining  witnesses  Mr.  Webster  had 
no  superior  in  his  day  ;  and  his  reputation  in  this  respect  doubt 
less  aided  the  impression  which  he  produced  upon  this  jury. 
There  were  traditions  which  had  come  over  the  border  from 
New  Hampshire,  of  his  terrible  skill  in  baffling  the  deepest 
plans  of  perjury  and  fraud,  which  excited  the  jury  to  the 
closest  attention  to  his  method  of  dealing  with  Goodridge. 
They  saw  his  well-concocted  story  laid  bare,  in  all  its  improb 
able  features,  while  every  aid  was  given  to  him  by  Mr.  Web 
ster  to  develop  suggestions  which  could  be  set  off  against  the 
theory  that  the  latter  meant  to  maintain.  But  when  all  the 
evidence  for  and  against  Good  ridge's  narrative  had  been  drawn 
out,  and  it  came  to  the  summing  up,  there  remained  two  obvi 
ous  difficulties  in  the  way  of  that  hypothesis.  One  of  them 
was,  that  no  motive  had  been  shown  for  so  strange  an  act  as  a 
man's  falsely  pretending  to  have  been  robbed,  and  charging  the 
robbery  upon  innocent  people ;  the  other,  that  the  theory  of 
Goodridge  being  himself  the  robber,  apparently  made  it  neces 
sary  to  believe  that  he  had  proceeded,  in  his  fraudulent  manu 
facture  of  proofs,  to  the  extremity  of  shooting  a  pistol-bullet 


174  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  VIII. 

through  his  own  hand.  These  were  very  formidable  difficulties ; 
for  the  law  of  evidence,  as  administered  in  our  criminal  juris 
prudence,  very  properly  regards  the  absence  of  motive  for  an 
act,  the  commission  of  which  depends  on  circumstantial  proof, 
as  one  of  the  important  things  to  be  weighed  in  favor  of  inno 
cence  ;  and  as  to  the  shooting,  it  was  certainly  in  a  high  de 
gree  improbable  that  a  man  would  maim  himself,  in  order  to 
maintain  a  false  statement  that  he  had  been  robbed  and  maimed 
by  some  one  else.  But  in  grappling  with  these  difficulties,  Mr. 
Webster  told  the  jury  that  the  range  of  human  motives  is  al 
most  infinite ;  that  a  desire  to  avoid  payment  of  his  debts, 
if  he  owed  debts,  or  a  whimsical  ambition  for  distinction, 
might  have  been  at  the  bottom  of  Goodridge's  conduct ;  and 
that  having  once  announced  himself  to  the  community  as  a 
man  who  had  been  robbed  of  a  large  sum  and  beaten  nearly 
to  death,  he  had  to  go  on  and  charge  somebody  with  the  act. 
This  was  correct  reasoning,  but  still  no  motive  had  been  shown 
for  the  original  pretence;  and,  if  there  had  not  been  some 
decisive  circumstances  developed  on  the  evidence,  it  is  not 
easy  to  say  how  this  case  ought  to  have  been  decided.  These 
circumstances  made  it  unnecessary,  to  believe  that,  although 
Goodridge  himself  discharged  the  pistol  which  wounded  him, 
he  intended  that  result.  His  story  was,  that  the  pistol  of  the 
robber  went  off  at  the  moment  when  he  had  grasped  it  with 
his  left  hand.  Yet,  according  to  the  testimony  of  the  physi 
cians  who  attended  him,  there  were  no  marks  of  powder  on  his 
hand ;  and  the  appearance  of  the  wound  led  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  muzzle  of  the  piece  must  have  been  three  or  four  feet 
from  his  hand,  while  there  were  marks  of  powder  on  the  sleeve 
of  his  coat,  and  the  ball  passed  through  the  coat  as  well  as  the 
hand.  This  state  of  the  evidence  justified  Mr.  Webster's  remark 
that  "  all  exhibitions  are  subject  to  accidents.  Whether  serious  or 
farcical,  they  do  not  always  proceed  exactly  as  they  are  designed 
to  do."  Goodridge,  he  argued,  intended  to  shoot  the  ball 
through  his  coat-sleeve,  and  it  accidentally  perforated  his  hand 
also.  This  discredited  his  story  more  than  any  thing  else,  and 
convinced  the  jury  that,  if  he  found  any  of  his  money  on  the 
premises  of  the  Kennistons,  he  placed  it  there  himself.  The 
Kennistons  were  acquitted.  Goodridge  returned  to  the  charge ; 


1818.]  ROBBERY  OF  MAJOR  GOODRIDGE.  175 

Jackman  was  put  on  trial  at  the  next  term  of  the  court,  and 
the  jury  disagreed.  At  his  second  trial,  Mr.  "Webster  defended 
him,  and  he  was  acquitted.  These  criminal  proceedings  were 
followed  by  an  action  for  a  malicious  prosecution,  instituted  by 
Pearson  against  Goodridge.  Mr.  Webster  was  of  counsel  for 
the  plaintiff  in  this  case.  The  evidence  was  now  still  more 
clear  against  Goodridge  ;  a  verdict  for  a  large  amount  was 
recovered  against  him,  and  the  public  at  last  saw  the  fact 
judicially  established  that  he  had  robbed  himself.  He  left 
New  England  a  disgraced  man.  No  clew  to  his  motive  was 
ever  discovered. 

Twenty  years  afterward,  Mr.  Webster  was  travelling  in  the 
western  part  of  the  State  of  New  York ;  he  stopped  at  a  tavern, 
and  went  in  to  ask  for  a  glass  of  water.  The  man  behind  the 
bar  exhibited  great  agitation  as  the  traveller  approached  him, 
and  when  he  placed  the  glass  of  water  before  Mr.  Webster  his 
hand  trembled  violently,  but  he  did  not  speak.  Mr.  Webster 
drank  the  water,  turned  without  saying  another  word,  and 
reentered  his  carriage.  The  man  was  Goodridge. 


176  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IX. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

1820-1822. 

ME.  CALHOUN'S  VISIT   TO  BOSTON — PROFESSIONAL    POSITION — CON 
VENTION  TO  REVISE    THE    CONSTITUTION    OF    MASSACHUSETTS — 

THE     PLYMOUTH     ORATION CASE     OF      LA     JEUNE     EUGENIE — 

DEFENCE   OF   JUDGE    JAMES     PRESCOTT ELECTED     TO     CONGRESS 

FROM   BOSTON. 

I  1ST  the  summer  of  1820,  while  Mr.  Webster  was  diligently 
occupied  in  the  practice  of  his  profession,  Mr.  Calhoun, 
who  was  then  Secretary  of  War,  made  an  official  tour  to  the 
E"orth,  for  the  purpose  of  examining  the  forts  and  arsenals  of 
the  Federal  Government.  His  reception  by  Mr.  Webster  in 
Boston  is  thus  described  by  Mr.  Ticknor  : 

"  When  Mr.  Calhoun  came  to  Boston  in  the  summer  of  1820,  as  Secre 
tary  of  War,  to  examine  the  arsenals  and  forts,  Mr.  Webster,  who  then 
lived  in  Somerset  Street,  was  particularly  hospitable  and  attentive  to  him. 
They  had  always  been  on  good  and  kindly  terms,  even  during  the  war, 
when  they  were  leading  in  opposite  parties.  Whatever  collisions  they 
might  have  had  on  the  floor  of  the  House,  were  all  forgotten  at  the  time 
of  Mr.  Calhoun's  visit  to  Boston.  Mr.  Webster  was  then  earnestly  devoted 
to  the  practice  of  his  profession,  but  he  was  unquestionably  not  without 
political  aspirations.  He  was  much  with  Mr.  Calhoun  ;  went  with  him  to 
the  arsenal  at  Watertown,  and  passed  the  rest  of  the  only  day  he  could  be 
with  him  in  driving  about  the  neighborhood.  A  large  party  of  the  prin 
cipal  persons  in  this  portion  of  the  country,  I  recollect,  waited  long  for 
them  at  Mr.  Webster's  to  dinner.  Mr.  Calhoun  talked  much  and  most 
agreeably  at  table,  and  it  was  evident  to  all  of  us  that  Mr.  Webster  desired 
to  draw  him  out  and  show  him  under  the  most  favorable  aspects  to  his 
friends.  After  dinner,  a  considerable  number  of  young  men,  particularly 


1820.]  WEBSTER  AND   PINKKEY.  177 

of  the  young  lawyers  of  the  town,  came  in  and  were  presented  to  Mr. 
Calhoun.  "We  all  said,  '  Mr.  Webster  wishes  Mr.  Calhoun  to  be  the  next 
President  of  the  United  States ; '  some  added,  '  He  has  been  driving  with 
him  all  day,  tete-d-tete  in  a  phaeton,  and  they  understand  one  another.' 
But  the  positions  of  such  men  are  stronger  than  themselves,  and  they 
understand  one  another  without  words." 

In  the  midst  of  the  professional  practice  which  has  been 
partly  described  in  the  last  chapter,  Mr.  "Webster  was  called 
upon  to  act  a  very  important  part  in  an  entirely  new  sphere  of 
public  duty.  He  had  been  hitherto  known  as  a  leading  mem 
ber  of  Congress,  and  as  a  very  eminent  lawyer.  In  these 
capacities  he  had,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  achieved  a  reputa 
tion  which  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  second  to  that  of  any 
man  in  America,  when  we  take  into  account  both  his  position 
at  the  bar  and  his  position  as  a  statesman.  Of  all  those  who 
were  practising  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  in 
1820,  Mr.  Pinkney  is  the  person  with  whom  we  naturally  com 
pare  Mr.  Webster.  He  was  much  older  than  Mr.  Webster, 
and  as  an  advocate  and  a  lawyer  he  was  undoubtedly  a  very 
great  man — inferior  to  no  one  who  has  ever  yet  addressed  that 
tribunal.  That  Mr.  Webster,  before  he  was  forty,  became  the 
equal  and  competitor  of  Mr.  Pinkney,  is  certainly  a  fact  ad 
mitted  by  their  contemporaries,  and  it  marks  the  position  to 
which  Mr.  Webster  attained  by  very  rapid  strides,  as  if  it  be 
longed  to  him  of  right.  But  Mr.  Pinkney  added  another  to  the 
list  of  distinguished  lawyers  who  have  not  been  equally  distin 
guished  in  parliamentary  life.  His  place,  as  he  himself  well 
knew,  and  as  he  once  said  in  Congress,  was  in  courts  of  justice; 
and  there,  in  spite  of  the  affectations  which  covered  him  with  a 
mantle  of  small  weaknesses,  he  was  regarded,  by  all  who  were 
accustomed  to  hear  him,  as  a  person  of  prodigious  strength. 
]N"o  amount  of  foppery  could  obscure  the  splendor  of  his  intel 
lect  or  intercept  the  blaze  of  light  which  he  poured  upon  his 
subject,  when  he  forgot,  in  the  earnestness  of  his  reasoning  and 
the  vehemence  of  his  elocution,  his  strange  desire  to  be  con 
sidered  rather  an  idle  and  elegant  man  of  fashion  than  the 
indefatigable  student  and  laborious  lawyer  he  really  was.1 

1  Mr.  Justice  Story  was  in  the  habit     one  occasion,  when  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr. 
of  relating  the  following  anecdote :   On     Pinkney  were  opposed  to  each  other  in 
13 


178  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IX. 

Neither  Mr.  Clay  nor  Mr.  Calhoun,  who  were  nearer  Mr. 
Webster's  age,  was  greatly  distinguished  as  a  lawyer.  Mr. 
Calhoun,  in  fact,  never  practised  the  law;  and,  down  to  the 
year  1820,  Mr.  Clay,  who  had  become  very  eminent  in  political 
life,  was  known  chiefly  as  a  statesman,  and  had  gathered  no 
special  laurels  at  the  bar  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States.  Of  Mr.  "Webster,  therefore,  it  may  be  said,  at  the  period 
to  which  I  now  refer,  that,  when  we  regard  the  double  reputa 
tion  which  he  had  acquired  on  the  floor  of  Congress  and  in  the 
courts  of  law,  and  consider  his  age,  he  was  the  most  conspicuous 
person  in  the  country.  All  this  reputation  was  now  to  encounter 
new  hazards,  in  new  and  untried  fields  of  intellectual  exertion. 

The  State  of  Massachusetts  had  existed  under  a  free  consti 
tution  of  its  own  creation,  since  the  year  1780.  This  constitu 
tion,  the  work  of  John  Adams,  Samuel  Adams,  and  other 
patriots  of  the  Revolution,  had  been  made  in  the  midst  of  the 
Revolutionary  War,  and,  of  course,  before  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States.  It  was  in  many  respects  a  model  of  a  free 
representative  government,  carefully  reconciling  popular  rights 
with  public  order ;  but  the  circumstances  of  the  Commonwealth 
for  which  it  was  designed  had  in  forty  years  undergone  some 
changes.  Maine,  which  had  hitherto  belonged  to  Massachu 
setts  as  a  part  of  her  jurisdiction,  had  asked  and  obtained  the 
consent  of  the  latter  to  a  separation.  The  necessity  which  this 
induced  for  modifying  the  representative  system,  and  other 
exigencies  growing  out  of  the  progress  of  society  and  the  rela 
tions  of  the  State  to  the  Federal  Government,  caused  the 
assembling  of  a  convention  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts  to 
revise  its  constitution.  This  body  met  in  Boston  in  November, 
1820,  and  terminated  its  sessions  in  January,  1821.  Mr.  Web 
ster  was  one  of  the  delegates  to  it. 

the  same  cause,  the  latter  had  an  as-  became  more    and  more   drowsy;    the 

sociate  who  was  not  remarkable  for  the  counsel  on  the  opposite  side,  the  judges, 

brilliancy  or  importance  of  his  discourse,  and  the  spectators  paying  a  very  languid 

This  gentleman  had  been  speaking  for  attention,  if  any  at  all.     Presently,  ceas- 

some  time,  opening  his  cause  in  a  very  ing  to   speak  from  his  own  notes,  Mr. 

prosing  manner,  and  more  than  one  of  stated  a  new  point,  and  followed  it 

the  judges  had  even  relapsed  into  some-  by  some  observations  that  caused  every 
thing  very  like  a  nod,  when  Mr.  Pinkney  body  to  take  up  their  pens  and  open 
was  called  out.  As  he  left  the  court,  he  their  ears.  At  that  moment  a  whisper 
handed  his  notes  to  his  colleague.  Mr.  from  Mr.  Webster  became  audible 

went  on  for  some  time  from  his  own  through  the  room — '  He  has  got  on  the 

brief,  and  the  atmosphere  of  the  court  armor  of  Acliilles ! '  " 


1820.]  MASSACHUSETTS  CONVENTION.  179 

A  constitutional  convention  of  an  American  State  is  a 
representative  body  of  one  chamber,  acting  for  the  whole  com 
munity,  in  whom  resides  the  power,  according  to  the  theory  of 
our  institutions,  of  amending,  altering,  or  abolishing  the  exist 
ing  form  of  the  State  government  and  of  substituting  a  new 
one,  subject  only  to  the  condition  expressly  imposed  by  the 
Federal  Constitution,  that  the  form  shall  be  republican,  and  to 
the  further  implied  condition  that  it  shall  consist  with  the  rights 
and  authority  of  the  United  States.  Exercising  this  ample 
and  original  power  of  moulding  the  political  institutions  of 
society  for  the  purpose,  at  least,  of  determining  what  shall  be 
submitted  to  the  people  for  their  final  ratification,  such  a  body 
eminently  demands  the  highest  range  of  talent  and  character 
that  the  society  can  furnish.  The  people  of  Massachusetts 
were  not  unmindful  of  what  they  owed  to  their  own  interests, 
or  to  the  science  and  the  cause  of  good  government,  in  constitut 
ing  this  convention.  They  wisely  excluded  no  one  on  account 
of  his  present  public  station.  Several  of  the  prominent  judges, 
including  Parker,  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  Commonwealth,  and 
both  of  the  Federal  judges,  Story  and  Davis,  were  members. 
All  the  learned  professions,  the  merchants,  the  agricultural 
classes,  the  town  and  the  rural  populations,  were  duly  repre 
sented  by  a  body  of  delegates  whose  aggregate  weight  of  char 
acter  and  ability  has  not  been  exceeded  by  that  of  any  assembly 
that  was  ever  convened  in  New  England.  The  venerable  John 
Adams,  then  in  his  eighty-fifth  year,  added  grace  and  dignity 
to  the  convention  as  one  of  its  members,  and  the  compliment  was 
paid  to  him  of  electing  him  its  president ;  but  he  declined  the 
duty  of  the  chair,  and  the  Chief  Justice  was  then  substituted  as 
the  presiding  officer.  The  convention  was  necessarily  a  large 
body,  because  the  municipalities  of  the  State,  consisting  of 
about  three  hundred  towns,  had  always  claimed  and  exercised 
the  right  of  separate  representation  in  all  political  action,  and 
because  their  corporate  existence,  in  fact,  lay  at  the  foundation 
of  the  State  itself.  The  number  of  delegates  for  each  town  was 
fixed  at  the  number  by  which  it  was  entitled  to  be  represented 
in  the  lower  House  of  the  Legislature.  This  gave  a  convention 
of  nearly  five  hundred  members.  So  numerous  a  body  of 
course  embraced  elements  of  decidedly  radical  as  well  as  of 


180  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IX. 

strong  conservative  tendencies.  The  latter  class  in  general 
regarded  the  old  constitution  as  one  demanding  few  alterations 
or  additions ;  the  former  naturally  favored  innovations ;  so  that 
the  chief  occasions  likely  to  call  forth  the  abilities  of  the  mem 
bers  would  be  those  which  involved  the  attack  or  the  defence 
of  institutions  and  principles  that  lie  at  the  basis  of  republican 
government. 

But,  although  these  two  tendencies  of  individual  minds,  the 
radical  and  the  conservative,  were  present  in  this  convention — 
as  they  must  be  in  every  thing  that  relates  to  the  affairs  of 
society — there  were  peculiar  circumstances  attending  it,  which 
made  it  a  very  different  sphere  for  such  a  man  as  Mr.  Webster, 
from  a  parliamentary  and  legislative  body.  A  public  man  who 
leads  in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  or  in  one  of  our  Houses 
of  legislation,  national  or  State,  is  generally  obliged  to  do  so  as 
the  head  of  a  party.  To  a  certain  extent  his  opinions  and 
action  are  restricted  by  the  principles  professed  by  his  party, 
and  the  objects  at  which  it  aims,  whether  it  conducts  or  opposes 
the  administration  of  the  time.  He  may,  it  is  true,  have  occa 
sion  to  deal  with  questions  that  go  deeper  than  party  opinion, 
and  to  appeal  to  that  which  is  common  to  all  parties ;  he  often 
has  to  win  votes  from  his  opponents  as  well  as  from  those  with 
whom  he  is  politically  associated.  Still,  the  existence  of  parties 
is  not  seldom  unfavorable  to  the  exhibition  and  influence  of  the 
higher  statesmanship,  which  finds  its  best  field  when  native 
genius  for  political  discussion  and  practical  talent  for  the 
application  of  principles  to  the  condition  of  the  whole  society 
can  do  their  appropriate  work  without  the  bias  and  the  tram 
mels  arising  from  that  minor  organization  in  the  republic  that 
is  constituted  by  a  party.  In  the  Massachusetts  Convention  of 
1820  there  were  fortunately  no  parties.  There  was  a  small 
minority  of  highly  cultivated  and  experienced  men,  who  gen 
erally  acted  together,  from  the  natural  concurrence  of  the  sen 
timents  of  men  of  that  class ;  and  they  commonly  governed  the 
decisions  of  the  whole  body.  But  the  convention  was  chosen 
and  held  at  a  time  when  there  were  no  political  parties  in  this 
country  acting  as  strictly  defined  organizations.  It  was  in 
what  was  called  "  the  era  of  good  feeling  ; "  a  current  designation 
of  the  state  of  political  affairs  that  existed  during  the  adminis- 


1820.]  MASSACHUSETTS  CONVENTION.  181 

tration  of  President  Monroe,  after  the  old  contests  and  feelings 
between  the  Federal  and  Democratic  parties  had  mostly  sub 
sided,  and  before  their  successors,  the  National  Eepublican  or 
Whig,  and  the  modern  Democratic  parties,  had  been  formed. 

This  absence  of  party  divisions  in  the  convention  was  highly 
favorable  to  the  best  interests  of  the  State,  and  it  was  especially 
so  to  the  influence  of  Mr.  Webster  and  of  those  who  acted  with 
him,  upon  the  institutions  of  the  Commonwealth.  It  rendered 
the  convention,  although  an  extremely  popular  body,  remark 
able  for  its  deliberative  character.  It  was  an  assembly  that 
listened  to  and  was  controlled  by  argument;  that  sacrificed 
prejudice  to  reason ;  and,  when  it  saw  the  right,  decided  for  it, 
without  the  influences  arising  from  the  intermixture  of  party 
objects.  To  these  fortunate  circumstances,  and  to  the  power 
which  they  gave  to  such  a  statesman  as  Mr.  Webster,  it  is  in  a 
large  degree  to  be  ascribed  that  the  political  institutions  of 
Massachusetts  remain  to  this  day,  in  many  respects,  decidedly 
more  conservative  than  those  of  many  of  her  sister  States,  not 
withstanding  the  spirit  of  her  people  in  political  action  is  often 
quite  the  reverse  of  what  might  be  argued  from  the  spirit  and 
letter  of  their  constitution.  Mr.  Webster's  activity  and  success 
in  this  convention  were  thus  described  by  Judge  Story,  in  a 
letter  to  a  common  friend,  soon  after  its  session  was  terminated : 

"  Our  friend  "Webster  has  gained  a  noble  reputation.  ...  It  was  a 
glorious  field  for  him,  and  he  has  had  an  ample  harvest.  The  whole  force 
of  his  great  mind  was  brought  out,  and  in  several  speeches  he  commanded 
universal  admiration.  He  always  led  the  van,  and  was  most  skilful  and 
instantaneous  in  attack  and  retreat.  He  fought,  as  I  have  told  him,  in  the 
'  imminent  deadly  breach ; '  and  all  I  could  do  was  to  skirmish  in  aid  of 
him  upon  some  of  the  enemy's  outposts.  On  the  whole,  I  never  was  more 
proud  of  any  display  than  his  in  my  life." 1 

Mere  ambition,  although  Mr.  Webster  certainly  was  not 
then  or  at  any  other  time  without  ambition,  is  not  to  be  re 
garded  as  the  sole  spring  that  moved  this  great  intellectual 
energy.  He  was  in  the  vigor  of  manhood ;  full  of  talent  of  the 
most  various  kinds ;  full  of  knowledge,  as  knowledge  is  derived 
from  books  or  from  the  business  of  life  ;  with  forces  within  him 
that  were  irrepressible,  and  that  carried  him  forward  in  every 


Letter  to  Mr.  Mason,  January  21,  1821. — (Life  of  Judge  Story,  i.,  p.  395.) 


182  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IX. 

conflict,  by  their  spontaneous  action,  to  the  accomplishment  of 
all  the  good  toward  which  such  extraordinary  gifts  are  naturally 
impelled.  At  this  time  of  his  life  there  was  scarcely  ever  seen 
in  him  any  of  that  solemn  repose,  amounting  to  an  apparent 
lethargy,  from  which  in  his  later  years  he  seemed  capable  of 
being  aroused  only  by  a  strong  external  pressure.  I  have  heard 
him  described,  by  those  who  knew  him  at  this  period,  as  being 
in  manner  extremely  alert  and  vivacious,  although  always 
dignified  and  refined.  My  own  recollection  of  him  goes  back 
sufficiently  far  to  enable  me  to  remember  the  manifestations  of 
power  which  his  countenance,  his  bearing,  and  his  conversation 
perpetually  gave  forth,  when  he  was  not  absorbed  in  the  ab 
stractions  of  thought  or  study ;  and  I  can  well  understand  the 
impressions  of  those  whose  recollections  were  earlier,  and  which 
led  them  to  describe  him  afterward  as  the  most  "  living  "  man 
they  had  ever  known.  Yet  Mr.  "Webster  was  never  carried, 
either  by  the  impulse  of  great  animal  spirits  or  by  the  force  of 
genius,  into  the  regions  of  impracticable  speculation,  or  of  over- 
refinement  in  politics,  or  of  mere  theories  in  human  affairs.  He 
could  be  as  acute  a  dialectician  as  any  man  whom  he  ever 
encountered ;  but  his  dialectics  were  never  divorced  from  those 
actual  conditions  of  society  which  limit  the  office  of  metaphysics 
in  the  science  of  government. 

Among  the  instances  of  his  application  of  theoretical  reason 
ing  to  the  circumstances  of  the  community  on  whose  constitu 
tion  he  was  acting,  a  brief  reference  only  can  be  made  here  to 
some  of  the  more  important  topics  on  which  he  exercised  a 
decisive  influence  over  the  deliberations  and  decisions  of  the 
convention.  One  of  these  related  to  the  question  whether  the 
oath  of  office  ought  to  be  made  to  embrace  any  other  religious 
test  than  is  implied  in  the  sanction  of  the  oath  itself. 

The  constitution  of  Massachusetts  had  hitherto  required  a 
declaration  of  belief  in  the  Christian  religion  as  a  part  of  the 
oath  of  office.  It  is  not  strange  that  this  should  have  been 
established  by  a  people  whose  earliest  polity,  from  the  first 
planting  of  their  colonies  of  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay, 
approached  very  nearly  to  a  theocracy.  When  the  constitution 
of  1Y80  was  formed,  the  principle  of  the  original  equality  of  all 
men  in  respect  to  civil  rights,  asserted  in  the  Declaration  of 


1820.]  MASSACHUSETTS  CONVENTION.  183 

Independence,  led  to  the  recognition  of  certain  personal  rights, 
which  the  Government,  representing  the  whole  people,  is  bound 
to  secure  to  each  individual  of  the  society  in  return  for  his  civil 
obedience  and  service.,  and  his  contribution  to  the  public  bur 
dens.  This  principle  was  embodied  in  the  Bill  of  Rights 
which  made  a  part  of  the  Constitution,  by  asserting  the  right 
of  all  individuals  to  be  protected  in  the  enjoyment  of  life, 
liberty,  and  property,  according  to  standing  laws.  In  progress 
of  time  there  came  to  be  a  vague  feeling  that  the  acknowledged 
rights  of  persons  ought  to  be  deemed  to  embrace  the  holding  of 
office ;  which,  in  the  actual  state  of  society,  they  could  not  em 
brace,  if  the  qualification  of  belief  in  the  Christian'  religion 
were  required,  since  it  was  known  that  this  belief  was  not 
universal.  Against  this  feeling  there  was  arrayed  another, 
which  had  its  origin  partly  in  the  old  connection  between 
church-membership  and  civil  station,  and  partly  in  the  opinion 
of  certain  classes  that  the  constitution  of  a  people  who  pro 
fessed  Christianity  ought  to  require  of  their  public  officers  a 
declaration  of  that  faith.  This  feeling  was  opposed  to  any 
relaxation  for  the  sake  of  making  it  possible  for  a  few  dis 
believers  to  hold  public  office. 

But,  between  these  two  opinions,  there  was  on  each  side  a 
question  that  needed  a  clear  examination  before  it  could  be 
determined  which  of  them  or  whether  either  of  them  was  cor 
rect.  On  the  one  hand,  is  it  true  that  the  holding  of  office  is  or 
should  be  made  one  of  the  acknowledged  rights  of  individuals 
on  the  same  ground  with  the  rights  of  life,  liberty,  and  prop 
erty  ?  On  the  other  hand,  is  it  necessary  to  the  safety  of  Chris 
tianity,  or  of  civil  government,  to  exclude  from  office  those  who 
are  not  qualified  to  profess  a  belief  in  that  religion  ?  Mr.  "Web 
ster  saw  with  his  usual  accuracy  that  the  true  answer  to  the 
first  of  these  questions  reduced  the  whole  matter  to  an  issue  of 
expediency.  In  making  that  answer,  he  vindicated  the  right 
of  the  State  to  prescribe  any  qualifications  for  office  that  it 
might  see  fit  to  make,  by  showing  that  office  cannot  be  claimed 
by  individuals  as  a  personal  right,  consistently  with  a  freedom 
of  choice  in  the  electors.  Practically,  he  argued,  whether  a 
belief  in  Christianity  is  or  is  not  required  as  a  constitutional 
qualification,  the  people  will  be  governed  in  their  choice  by  the 


184  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IX. 

sentiments  which  the  candidates  are  understood  to  hold  on  this 
as  well  as  on  other  subjects,  and  no  one  can  complain.  What 
the  people  can  practically  do,  without  giving  just  cause  for 
complaint,  they  have  a  right  previously  to  say  in  their  funda 
mental  law  that  they  will  do.  It  is  otherwise  with  the  rights 
of  life,  liberty,  and  property,  for  the  protection  of  which  civil 
society  is  instituted  ;  while  it  is  not  instituted  for  the  purpose 
of  securing  to  all  individuals  a  right  to  hold  office. 

Having  thus  disposed  of  the  claim  to  office  on  the  ground 
of  right,  he  placed  the  question  on  grounds  of  expediency,  by 
maintaining,  first,  that  the  exclusion  of  unbelievers  is  an  exclu 
sion  for  that  which  may  involve  the  conscience ;  second,  that,  as 
a  vast  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  State  were  believers  in 
the  Christian  religion,  it  was  sufficiently  certain,  without  any 
constitutional  requirement,  that  such  persons  would  ordinarily 
be  chosen  to  places  of  public  trust ;  third,  that  a  qualification 
which  is  practically  needless,  and  is  founded  in  an  objection  that 
may  involve  the  consciences  of  men,  is  an  unnecessary  rigor 
that  marks  men  with  opprobrium,  and  has  a  tendency  to  pro 
scription.  As  he  did  not  propose  to  strike  from  the  constitu 
tion  the  recognition  of  the  benefits  which  civil  society  derives 
from  the  institutions  of  Christianity,  he  thought  that  the  re 
moval  of  the  religious  qualification  for  office  could  not  be  mis 
construed.  These  views  prevailed  with  the  convention,  and 
this  qualification  has  ever  since  been  abolished  in  Massachusetts. 

The  two  most  important,  however,  of  the  elaborate  speeches 
made  by  Mr.  Webster  in  this  convention  related  to  the  basis 
of  the  Senate  and  the  independence  of  the  judiciary.  With 
respect  to  the  first  of  them,  taking  the  whole  speech  as  it  was 
delivered,  and  as  it  stands  in  the  report  of  the  proceedings, 
probably  there  is  not  on  record,  anywhere,  a  more  profound 
discussion  of  the  principles  on  which  a  republican  government 
can  be  so  formed  as  to  embrace  means  of  affording  a  distinct 
protection  to  property.  The  problem  of  founding  such  a  gov 
ernment,  in  part,  upon  property,  without  introducing  a  tendency 
to  oligarchy,  was  the  topic  which  Mr.  Webster  undertook  to 
explain  on  this  occasion  ;  and  whoever  will  examine  the  whole 
scope  of  his  argument,  and  will  compare  it  with  what  has 
been  written  and  said  elsewhere  on  the  relations  of  property  to 


1820.]  MASSACHUSETTS  CONVENTION.  185 

government — observing  the  illustrations  which  he  drew  from 
what  was  then  taking  place  in  other  countries,  and  the  predic 
tions  which  he  made — will  be  satisfied  of  the  importance  of  this 
speech.  The  subject  came  before  the  convention  in  consequence 
of  a  provision  in  the  constitution  of  1780,  by  which  members 
of  the  Senate  had  been  chosen  in  districts  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  taxable  property  in  each  district,  while  members  of 
the  House  were  chosen  in  proportion  to  the  population  of  the 
towns  represented.  The  framers  of  that  constitution  had,  in 
this  way,  met  the  difficult  problem  in  representative  govern 
ment,  which  arises  when  there  are,  or  can  be,  no  personal  dis 
tinctions  on  which  to  found  one  of  the  branches  of  the  legisla 
tive  power.  They  selected  representation  by  districts,  in  pro 
portion  to  taxable  property,  because  this  is  the  only  mode 
in  which  a  difference  of  origin  between  two  Chambers  can  be 
introduced,  if  the  electors  of  both  are  to  be  the  same,  and  the 
persons  to  be  chosen  are  to  have  the  same  qualifications.  In 
the  course  of  forty  years,  there  had  been  a  considerable  increase 
of  the  democratic  spirit,  and  it  had  become  necessary  to  answer 
those  who  insisted  that  this  arrangement  gave  an  undue  advan 
tage  to  the  richer  districts,  and  that  it  was,  in  principle,  incon 
sistent  with  the  character  of  American  institutions.  The  ques 
tion  was,  whether  this  provision  of  the  old  constitution  should 
remain,  or  whether  the  representation  in  both  branches  of  the 
Legislature  should  be  based  on  population  alone. 

Mr.  Webster  divided  this  question  into  two.  They  were 
to  inquire,  he  said,  first,  whether  the  legislative  department 
was  to  be  constructed  with  any  other  check  than  such  as  arises 
simply  from  dividing  it  into  two  Houses ;  secondly,  if  there  was 
to  be  another  and  further  check,  in  what  manner  should  it  be 
created  ?  He  then  enforced  the  necessity,  and  explained  the 
office,  of  checks  and  balances  in  the  legislative  department. 
Their  utility,  he  said,  arises  from  the  truth  that,  in  representa 
tive  governments,  that  department  is  the  leading  and  predomi 
nating  power,  whose  tendency  is  to  encroach  on  all  the  other 
departments.  If  all  legislative  power  rests  in  a  single  House,  it 
is  very  doubtful  whether  any  proper  independence  can  be  given 
either  to  the  executive  or  the  judiciary,  because  there  is  no  suf 
ficient  safeguard  to  insure  deliberation  and  caution  in  its  meas- 


186  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IX. 

ures.  If  two  Chambers  are  chosen  upon  the  same  basis,  by  the 
same  electors,  and  for  the  same  term  of  office,  they  will  be  actu 
ated  by  the  same  feelings  and  interests  ;  they  will  be  substan 
tially  one  body,  though  two  in  form.  And  if  all  legislative 
power  be  in  one  popular  body,  all  other  power,  sooner  or 
later,  will  be  there  also.  There  can  be  no  sufficient  check  be 
tween  two  Chambers  without  some  difference  of  origin,  or 
interest,  or  feeling ;  and  the  great  question  had  been,  in  this 
country,  where  to  find,  or  how  to  create,  this  difference  in 
governments  entirely  elective  and  popular. 

In  the  actual  circumstances  of  the  State,  Mr.  "Webster  said, 
the  question  was  not  whether  a  representation  in  one  branch, 
by  districts,  in  proportion  to  their  public  taxes,  was  the  best 
mode  of  constituting  the  necessary  difference  between  the  two 
branches,  but  whether  it  was  better  than  no  mode ;  for  the 
whole  practice  and  spirit  of  the  people  were  opposed  to  the 
introduction  of  differences  in  the  qualifications  of  electors,  or 
of  the  persons  to  be  chosen,  or  in  the  manner  of  making  the 
appointments.  They  had  therefore  to  consider  the  question, 
whether  property,  not  as  an  element  of  personal  power  in  pro 
portion  to  the  amount  of  personal  possessions,  but  in  a  general 
sense,  and  in  a  general  form,  should  have  its  weight  and  influ 
ence  in  political  arrangements. 

In  the  discussion  of  this  part  of  the  subject,  he  exhibited 
his  thorough  understanding  of  the  fact  that  republican  govern 
ment,  as  it  has  grown  up  in  this  country,  rests  not  more  on 
political  constitutions  than  on  the  laws  which  regulate  the 
descent  and  distribution  of  property.  He  maintained  then, 
as  he  always  maintained,  that  our  constitutions  are  the  fruit 
of  the  general  equality  of  property  which  our  laws  and  cus 
toms  have  produced ;  an  equality  which  began  before  we  had 
constitutions,  and  which  fixed  the  future  frame  and  forms  of 
our  governments.  In  the  great  central  fact  of  the  division 
of  the  soil  among  a  multitude  of  small  proprietors,  tending 
constantly  to  produce  a  general  distribution  of  all  property,  lay 
the  truth  that,  in  the  distribution  of  political  power,  the  inter 
ests  of  property  may  be  consulted  and  provided  for,  without 
divorcing  them  from  the  interests  of  the  people.  In  all  coun 
tries,  it  is  true  that,  in  the  absence  of  military  force,  political 


1820.]  MASSACHUSETTS  CONVENTION.  187 

power  naturally  and  necessarily  goes  into  the  hands  which 
hold  the  property ;  in  this,  country,  it  goes  into  the  hands  of 
the  people,  because  the  people,  individually,  possess  property 
more  generally  than  has  been  known  elsewhere. 

In  illustration  of  the  effect  produced  upon  republican  insti 
tutions  by  the  equal  or  the  unequal  distribution  of  property,  Mr. 
Webster  resorted  to  the  instances  of  England  and  France.  In 
respect  to  the  former,  he  pointed  out  tendencies  that  we  have 
since  seen  progressing  to  very  decided  results  ;  and,  in  regard  to 
the  latter,  he  made  a  prediction  which  came  afterward  to  a 
literal  fulfilment.  In  England,  he  said,  the  process  of  subdi 
vision  of  property,  which  had  begun  after  the  abolition  of  the 
feudal  system  and  the  introduction  of  commerce,  had  been 
retarded  within  the  last  half  century.  Large  estates  were 
growing  larger,  and  the  number  of  those  who  held  no  prop 
erty  wTas  rapidly  increasing.  This  state  of  things  was  destined 
to  have  a  powerful  effect  on  the  British  Constitution ;  because 
the  great  inequality  of  property  tended  to  produce  and  to  in 
crease  the  danger  that  those  who  possessed  it  would  be  dis 
possessed  by  force ;  or,  in  other  words,  that  the  government 
might  be  overturned.  Another  half  century  has  nearly  elapsed 
since  Mr.  Webster  expressed  these  opinions ;  and  we  have  seen 
this  tendency  become  the  great  cause  of  anxiety  to  British 
statesmen,  and  the  controlling  reason  for  changes  which  have 
amounted  almost  to  a  revolution,  thus  far  fortunately  peaceful, 
but  of  which  we  have  not  yet  seen  the  issues  or  the  end. 

In  the  case  of  France,  the  effect  of  the  distribution  of  prop 
erty  upon  the  stability  and  forms  of  the  government  was,  in 
Mr.  Webster's  opinion,  destined  to  be  not  less  striking  and  still 
more  direct,  although  the  process  that  was  going  on  was 
the  reverse  of  that  which  was  to  be  witnessed  in  England. 
The  law  of  descents  then  prevailing  in  France  tended  to 
the  minute  subdivision  of  property,  and  to  the  creation  of  a 
great  number  of  small  proprietors.  The  opinion  then  gener 
ally  held  in  Europe  was,  that  the  masses  of  the  people  would 
become  too  poor  to  resist  the  encroachments  of  executive 
power.  Mr.  Webster  entertained  an  exactly  opposite  opinion. 
He  predicted  that  if  the  government  did  not  change  the  law, 
the  law  in  half  a  century  would  change  the  government ;  and 


188  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IX. 

that  tliis  change  would  be  not  in  favor  of  the  power  of  the 
crown,  as  European  writers  had  supposed,  but  against  it.  He 
founded  this  opinion  upon  the  experience  which  we  have  had 
in  this  country,  that  a  multitude  of  small  proprietors,  acting 
with  intelligence,  and  the  enthusiasm  that  springs  from  a 
common  cause,  constitute  an  invincible  power,  which  sooner 
or  later,  in  the  absence  of  military  force,  acts  upon  and  controls 
the  political  institutions.  In  six  years  after  this  prediction  was 
made,  the  King  of  France,  at  the  opening  of  the  Legislative 
Chambers,  declared  that  the  progressive  partitioning  of  lands 
was  essentially  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  a  monarchical  govern 
ment,  and  would  enfeeble  the  guaranties  which  the  charter  had 
given  to  his  throne  and  his  subjects. 

The  Revolution  of  1830  followed,  and  displaced  the  elder 
branch  of  the  Bourbons — a  revolution  that  was  made  through 
the  influence  of  the  classes  described  by  Mr.  Webster  as  the 
small  proprietors,  who  were  not  content  with  the  guaranties  of 
the  charter  which  the  King  sought  to  uphold  by  legislation 
that  would  prevent  the  minute  subdivision  of  property. 

The  contrast  which  these  two  examples  presented,  when 
placed  in  opposition  to  the  state  of  things  in  this  country, 
appeared  to  Mr.  "Webster  to  furnish  another  reason  for  pre 
serving  to  property  that  distinct  means  of  protection  which 
had  been  introduced  by  making  it  the  origin  of  the  check 
which  the  construction  of  the  Legislature  required.  All  prop 
erty  being  subject  to  taxation,  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  a 
system  of  public  education,  in  which  the  children  of  the  poor 
can  participate  equally  with  the  children  of  the  rich,  it  was 
entitled  to  the  respect  and  care  of  government,  because,  in  a 
very  important  way,  it  aids  in  sustaining  government  by  paying 
for  the  education  of  the  people. 

The  effect  of  this  speech  and  of  a  very  powerful  one  made 
by  Judge  Story,  who  had  preceded  Mr.  Webster  in  the  dis 
cussion,  was,  that  the  existing  basis  of  the  Senate  was  retained. 
It  has  since  been  changed :  and,  whatever  may  have  been  the 
reasons  for  that  change,  it  has  become  apparent  in  Massachu 
setts,  as  it  has  elsewhere,  that,  where  there  is  no  difference  of 
origin  between  the  two  branches  of  a  legislative  body,  there 
will  be  no  difference  of  sentiment  and  feeling :  all  will  be  actu- 


1820.]  MASSACHUSETTS  CONVENTION.  189 

ated  by  the  same  motives  and  be  under  the  same  influences : 
and  thus  the  practical  value  of  a  division  into  two  Chambers 
will  be  greatly  diminished  by  the  absence  of  every  efficient 
check. 

The  constitution  of  1780,  adopting  the  practice  which  had 
been  introduced  in  England,  of  making  judges  removable  from 
office  by  the  crown  only  on  an  address  of  Parliament,  had 
made  them  removable  in  like  manner  by  the  State  Executive 
on  an  address  of  the  two  Houses  of  the  Legislature.  At  the 
same  time  the  term  of  the  judicial  office  in  Massachusetts  was 
during  good  behavior  :  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was 
the  original  purpose  of  the  people  to  render  the  judiciary  com 
pletely  independent  of  the  other  departments.  An  error,  how 
ever,  had  crept  in,  which  appeared  to  mar  the  theory  of  inde 
pendence  which  the  people  had  intended  to  establish,  and 
which  made  that  theory  practically  less  operative  than  it  ought 
to  be.  It  had  not  been  sufficiently  considered  that  the  pur 
pose  of  the  change  in  England,  from  a  naked  power  of  removal 
by  the  crown  to  a  power  of  removal  on  an  address  of  Parlia 
ment,  was  to  shield  the  judges  against  the  arbitrary  influence 
of  the  crown ;  and  that  this  change,  while  it  had  avoided  one 
evil,  had  introduced  what  was  a  less  but  what  was  still 
another  evil.  It  had  been  assumed,  in  Massachusetts,  to  be 
necessary  to  retain  the  removal  by  address,  in  order  to  meet 
cases  of  incompetency  or  personal  misconduct ;  impeachment 
being  regarded  as  the  appropriate  remedy  for  official  miscon 
duct.  If  this  necessity  exists,  still,  a  naked  power  in  a  bare 
majority  of  the  Legislature,  to  pass  an  address  for  the  removal 
of  a  judge  from  office,  must  be  allowed  to  be  an  imperfection ; 
and  this  imperfection  was  increased  in  the  Massachusetts  con 
stitution  of  1780,  by  the  absence  of  any  provision  requiring 
the  reasons  to  be  assigned,  or  admitting  the  judge  to  be  heard. 

To  correct  this,  Mr.  Webster  and  others  of  the  most  promi 
nent  members  of  the  convention  desired  to  introduce  a  pro 
vision  that  would  require  an  address  of  removal  to  be  passed  by 
the  votes  of  two-thirds  of  each  House..  On  this  proposition  Mr. 
Webster  made  the  speech  on  the  independence  of  the  judi 
ciary,  which  now  stands  in  the  third  volume  of  his  works.  The 
proposition  was  not  adopted.  On  its  rejection,  Mr.  Webster 


190  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IX. 

immediately  introduced  a  resolution,  declaring  that  no  address 
for  the  removal  of  any  judicial  officer  should  pass  either  House 
of  the  Legislature,  until  the  causes  for  such  removal  are  first 
stated  and  entered  on  the  journal,  and  that  a  copy  thereof  shall 
be  served  on  the  person  in  office,  so  that  he  may  be  admitted 
to  a  hearing  in  his  defence  before  each  House.  This  was 
adopted,  and  afterward  became  a  part  of  the  constitution. 

On  a  great  many  other  subjects  Mr.  "Webster  took  a  leading 
part  in  this  convention.  So  important,  indeed,  was  his  whole 
action  in  this  body,  that  it  gave  him,  to  use  the  words  of 
another,  "  a  degree  of  confidence,  respect,  and  authority,  to 
which  few  in  that  ancient  Commonwealth  could  lay  claim."  * 
The  mere  amount  of  labor  which  he  performed,  in  this  revision 
of  the  constitution  of  the  State,  impressed  the  members  and 
the  public  not  less  than  the  ease  and  readiness  or  the  com 
manding  ability  which  he  brought  to  the  work. 

But,  while  his  duties  in  that  convention  would  seem  to  have 
been  enough  to  fill  the  measure  of  any  man's  powers,  he  was 
at  the  same  time  engaged  in  writing  the  celebrated  discourse 
which  he  delivered  at  Plymouth,  on  the  two  hundredth  anni 
versary  of  its  settlement,  December  22,  1820.  It  has  been 
already  intimated  that  this  was  a  new  and  untried  field  for  Mr. 
"Webster  to  enter.  The  orations  which  he  had  delivered  on  the 
4th  of  July,  nearly  all  of  them  before  he  was  five-and-twenty, 
may  be  regarded,  as  he  himself  once  said  of  them,  as  boyish 
performances.  The  subject  of  his  P.  B.  K.  oration  in  1809, 
which  was  a  merely  literary  discourse,  and  that  of  his  address 
before  the  Washington  Benevolent  Society  of  Portsmouth  in 
1812,  which  was  purely  political,  had  neither  of  them  ap 
proached  in  grandeur  the  theme  on  which  he  was  now  to 
appear  in  the  character  of  an  orator.  JSTor  had  he  been,  since 
those  comparatively  unimportant  occasions,  in  the  habit  of  ap 
pearing  before  the  public  in  that  character,  or  of  discussing 
subjects  with  a  view  to  any  other  than  business  purposes.  He 
was  known  to  be  the  possessor  of  great  eloquence,  to  be  a  pro 
found  and  original  writer,  and  master  of  a  singularly  correct 
and  perspicuous  English  style.  Still,  the  construction  of  one 
of  those  capital  discourses,  which,  adapted  to  the  demands  of 

1  Philadelphia  Quarterly  Review,  1831. 


f 


1820.]  PLYMOUTH  ORATION.  191 

a  great  subject,  and  an  important  historical  event,  shall  satisfy 
the  thoughts  and  feelings  at  once  of  the  most  and  the  least  cul 
tivated  of  a  popular  audience,  and  then  shall  remain,  when  it 
comes  to  be  addressed  through  the  press  to  the  wider  audience 
of  a  nation,  a  monument  of  fame  to  the  occasion  and  the 
speaker,  was  what  he  had  not  hitherto  undertaken. 

~No  occasion  or  subject,  however,  could  have  been  presented 
to  Mr.  Webster  better  fitted  to  call  forth  his  powers  as  an 
orator,  than  the  celebration,  at  the  end  of  two  centuries,  of  the 
first  settlement  of  New  England.  A  child  of  New  England 
and  her  institutions,  his  nature  was  yet  too  large  and  compre 
hensive  to  permit  him  to  present  those  institutions  to  the 
world  in  any  other  light  than  that  in  which  every  observer  of 
human  progress,  and  every  admirer  of  human  greatness,  can 
recognize  what  they  have  done  for  America  and  for  mankind. 
At  no  part  of  his  life  had  he  any  tendency  to  exalt  one  por 
tion  of  his  country  over  another  ;  nor  did  this  occasion  demand 
of  him  any  narrow  and  local  spirit  of  boasting.  It  found  in  him 
an  intellect  that  could  grasp  the  largest  of  the  relations  between 
the  foundation  of  the  civil  and  religious  polity  of  New  England, 
and  the  growth  and  expansion  of  the  United  States ;  which 
could  describe  without  exaggeration,  and  yet  with  an  epic 
dignity,  the  peculiar  effects  of  the  colonization,  planted  from 
England  in  America,  on  the  knowledge,  the  sentiments,  and 
the  prospects  of  civilization.1 

1 1  deem  this  the  appropriate  place  to  ment  of  express  rule  and  precept,  either 

quote  Mr.  Webster's  sentiments  respect-  of  church  or  state.  That  always  makes 

ing  the  personal  characteristics  of  the  hypocrites  and  formalists ;  it  leads  men 

early  settlers  of  New  England,  as  I  find  to  rely  on  mint  and  cummin.  A  man 

them  expressed  in  a  letter  to  his  nephew,  thought  it  an  act  of  merit,  if  we  may 

Mr.  Haddock,  written  in  1826  :  take  the  blue  laws  of  Connecticut  for 

"  In  regard  to  the  moral  character  authority,  not  to  walk  within  ten  feet  of 

generally  of  our  ancestors,  the  settlers  his  wife  in  their  way  to  church ;  as  some 

of  New  England,  my  opinion  is,  that  they  people,  nowadays,  think  it  a  merit  to 

possessed  all  the  Christian  virtues,  but  restrain  their  daughters  from  a  village 

charity ;  and  they  seem  never  to  have  dance ;  one  is  quite  as  sensible  and  as 

doubted  that  they  possessed  that  also,  much  to  do  with  religion  as  the  other. 

And  nobody  could  accuse  their  system  Indeed,  it  is  the  universal  tendency  of 

or  their  practice  but  of  one  vice,  and  strong  religious  excitement,  a  tendency 

that  was  religious  hypocrisy,  of  which  of  our  infirm  nature,  growing  out  of  our 

they  had  an  infusion,  without  ever  being  weaknesses  and  our  vices,  to  run  into 

sensible  of  it.  observances  and  make  a  strong  merit  of 

"It  necessarily  resulted  from  that  external  acts.  Our  excellent  ancestors 
disposition  which  they  cherished,  of  sub-  did  not  escape  the  influence  of  this  pro 
jecting  men's  external  conduct,  in  all  pensity ;  but  they  had  so  many  other 
particulars,  to  the  influence  and  govern-  high  and  pure  virtues,  that  this  spot 


192  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  IX. 

Nearly  fifty  years  have  elapsed  since  the  delivery  of  this 
memorable  oration ;  and  of  those  who  heard  it,  and  heard  it  with 
minds  and  tastes  sufficiently  matured  to  comprehend  and  enjoy 
its  power  and  beauty,  there  can  be  but  few  survivors.  I  am 
able,  however,  to  quote  from  Mr.  Ticlmor  a  description  which 
brings  the  scene  and  the  orator  vividly  before  us  : 

"  I  went  to  Plymouth  on  the  21st  of  December,  1820,  with  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Webster,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  I.  P.  Davis,  Miss  Stockton,  Mr.  F.  C.  Gray, 
and  Miss  Mary  Mason.  Where  we  stopped  to  dine  we  overtook  fifty  or 
sixty  persons,  among  whom  were  Colonel  Perkins,  Mrs.  S.  G.  Perkins,  Mr. 
E.  Everett,  and  many  others  of  our  acquaintance.  Mr.  Webster  had  been  a 
little  uninterested  during  the  morning  drive,  wearied  perhaps  by  his  la 
bors  in  the  convention,  and  partly  occupied  with  thoughts  of  the  follow 
ing  day.  But  at  the  little  half-way  house,  where  we  all  crowded  into  two 
or  three  small  rooms,  we  had  a  very  merry  time,  and  Mr.  Webster  was  as 
gay  as  any  one.  In  the  evening  at  Plymouth  every  thing  had  the  air  of  a 
fete;  the  houses  of  the  principal  street — in  one  of  which  we  lodged — were 
all  lighted  up,  so  that  the  street  itself  was  illuminated  by  them,  and  a  band 
of  music  went  up  and  down,  followed  by  a  crowd,  while  it  serenaded  the 
many  strangers  already  collected  from  a  distance  for  the  great  centennary 
anniversary.  Old  Mr.  Samuel  Davis,  a  sort  of  embodiment  of  the  Pilgrim 
traditions  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  others  of  the  principal  inhabit 
ants  of  Plymouth,  paid  their  respects  to  Mr.  Webster  in  the  course  of  the 
evening,  and  made  it  very  agreeable,  from  the  recollections  that  they 
brought  with  them  and  the  conversation  that  naturally  followed. 

"  In  the  morning  I  went  with  Mr.  Webster  to  the  church  where  he 
was  to  deliver  the  oration.  It  was  the  old  First  Church — Dr.  Kendall's. 
He  did  not  find  the  pulpit  convenient  for  his  purpose,  and  after  making 

should  not  give  offence.  They  were  a  consequences  are  extremely  useful.  It 
wonderful  people.  This  very  failing,  of  sharpened  the  sight  for  the  discovery  of 
which  I  have  spoken,  leaned  so  much  on  political  evils.  The  tea-tax,  for  example, 
the  virtues  of  decision,  sense  of  duty,  was  not  oppressive,  as  a  tax ;  it  was  too 
and  the  feeling  that  will  bear  no  com-  small  for  that.  It  was  opposed  on  prin- 
promise  with  what  it  thinks  wrong,  that  ciple.  '  It  led  or  might  lead  to  other 
I  forgive  it  to  them.  The  determined  taxes.'  Our  fathers  acted  on  system ; 
spirit  with  which  they  resisted  every  ap-  and  the  inquiry  with  them  was,  not 
proach  of  what  they  thought  evil,  was  whether  the  thing  was  bearable,  but 
itself  a  great  virtue.  '  Of  itself  it  is  whether  it  was  right.  I  verily  believe, 
harmless,  but  it  leads,  or  may  lead,  to  although  I  do  not  like  creeds  in  reli- 
evil.'  This  was  their  answer,  and  per-  gious  matters,  that  creeds  had  some- 
haps  there  is  something  in  it ;  but  then  thing  to  do  with  the  Revolution.  In 
it  may  be  said  of  almost  every  thing,  their  religious  controversies,  the  people 
The  vice  of  the  argument,  as  an  argu-  of  New  England  had  always  been  ac- 
ment,  is,  that  it  proves  too  much.  Eat-  customed  to  stand  on  points ;  and  when 
ing,  drinking,  sleeping,  conversation,  are  Lord  North  undertook  to  tax  them,  they 
all  equally  under  its  condemnation.  But  stood  on  points  also.  It  so  happened, 
though  indefensible  as  a  rule  of  conduct,  fortunately,  that  their  opposition  to 
some  general  consequences  followed  from  Lord  North  was  a  point  on  which  they 
the  spirit  which  accompanied  it,  which  all  united. 


1820.]  THE  PLYMOUTH  ORATION.  193 

two  or  three  experiments,  determined  to  speak  from  the  deacon's  seat 
under  it.  An  extemporaneous  table,  covered  with  a  green  baize  cloth,  was  ar 
ranged  for  the  occasion,  and,  when  the  procession  entered  the  church,  every 
thing  looked  very  appropriate,  though,  when  the  arrangement  was  first 
suggested,  it  sounded  rather  odd.  The  building  was  crowded :  indeed,  the 
streets  had  seemed  so  all  the  morning,  for  the  weather  was  fine,  and  the 
whole  population  was  astir  as  for  a  holiday.  The  oration  was  an  hour  and 
fifty  minutes  long,  but  the  whole  of  what  was  printed  a  year  afterward 
(for  it  was  a  year  before  it  made  its  appearance)  was  not  delivered.  His 
manner  was  very  fine — quite  various  in  the  different  parts.  The  passage 
about  the  slave-trade  was  delivered  with  a  power  of  indignation  such  as  I 
never  witnessed  on  any  other  occasion.  That  at  the  end,  when,  spreading 
his  arms  as  if  to  embrace  them,  he  welcomed  future  generations  to  the 
great  inheritance  which  we  have  enjoyed,  was  spoken  with  the  most  at 
tractive  sweetness,  and  that  peculiar  smile  which  in  him  was  always  so 
charming.  The  effect  of  the  whole  was  very  great.  As  soon  as  he  got 
home  to  our  lodgings,  all  the  principal  people  then  in  Plymouth  crowded 
about  him.  He  was  full  of  animation  and  radiant  with  happiness.  But 
there  was  something  about  him  very  grand  and  imposing  at  the  same  time. 
In  a  letter  which  I  wrote  the  same  day,  I  said  that '  he  seemed  as  if  he 
were  like  the  mount  that  might  not  be  touched,  and  that  burned  with 
fire.'  I  have  the  same  recollection  of  him  still.  I  never  saw  him  at  any 
time  when  he  seemed  to  me  to  be  more  conscious  of  his  own  powers,  or  to 
have  a  more  true  and  natural  enjoyment  from  their  possession. 

"  At  the  public  dinner  the  same  day,  he  was  not  much  moved  by  the 
great  enthusiasm  around  him,  which  had  chiefly  been  excited  by  him 
self.  At  the  ball  that  followed,  h  e  was  agreeable  to  everybody  and  noth 
ing  more ;  but  when  we  came  home  he  was  as  frolicsome  as  a  school-boy, 
laughing  and  talking,  and  making  merry  with  Mrs.  Webster,  Mrs.  Davis, 
and  Mrs.  Rotch,  the  daughter  of  his  old  friend  Stockton,1  till  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  The  next  day  we  came  back  to  Boston,  but  I  remember 
nothing  of  the  return." 

The  Plymouth  discourse  was  not  published  until  about  a 
year  after  its  delivery.  Public  expectation  had  been  greatly 
excited  by  the  accounts  of  those  who  heard  it,  and  the  com 
mendations  of  the  local  press.  The  following  letters,  addressed 
to  Mr.  Webster  by  two  persons  widely  differing  in  their  mental 
characteristics,  are  but  specimens  of  the  manner  in  which  it  was 
received. 

[PRESIDENT  JOHN  ADAMS  TO  MR.  WEBSTER.] 

"  MONTEZILLO,  December  23, 1821. 
"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  thank  you  for  your  discourse,  delivered  at  Plymouth,  on 

1  The  first  Senator  of  that  family,  and  dence,  father  of  the  late  Commodore 
signer  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen-  Stockton. 


194  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IX. 

the  termination  of  the  second  century  of  the  landing  of  our  fathers.  Un 
able  to  read  it  from  defect  of  sight,  it  was  last  night  read  to  me  by  our 
friend  Shaw.1  The  fullest  justice  that  I  could  do  it  would  be  to  tran 
scribe  it  at  full  length.  It  is  the  effort  of  a  great  mind,  richly  stored  with 
every  species  of  information.  If  there  be  an  American  who  can  read  it 
without  tears,  I  am  not  that  American.  It  enters  more  perfectly  into  the 
genuine  spirit  of  New  England  than  any  production  I  ever  read.  The 
observations  on  the  Greeks  and  Romans  ;  on  colonization  in  general ;  on 
the  West  India  Islands ;  on  the  past,  present,  and  future  of  America,  and 
on  the  slave-trade,  are  sagacious,  profound,  and  affecting  in  a  high  degree. 

"  Mr.  Burke  is  no  longer  entitled  to  the  praise — the  most  consummate 
orator  of  modern  times. 

"What  can  I  say  of  what  regards  myself?  To  my  humble  name, 
'  Exegisti  monumentum  aere  perennius."1 

"  This  oration  will  be  read  five  hundred  years  hence  with  as  much 
rapture  as  it  was  heard.  It  ought  to  be  read  at  the  end  of  every  century, 
and  indeed  at  the  end  of  every  year,  forever  and  ever. 

"  I  am,  sir,  with  the  profoundest  esteem,  your  obliged  friend  and  very 
humble  servant, 

"  JOHN  ADAMS. 

"  The  Honorable  Daniel  Webster." 

[CHANCELLOR  KENT  TO  MR.  WEBSTER.] 

"  ALBANY,  December  29,  1821. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Be  pleased  to  accept  my  thanks  for  the  receipt  and 
perusal  of  your  Plymouth  Discourse,  which  came  by  yesterday's  mail.  The 
reflections,  the  sentiments,  the  morals,  the  patriotism,  the  eloquence,  the 
imagination,  of  this  admirable  production  are  exactly  what  I  anticipated  ; 
elevated,  just,  and  true.  I  think  it  is  also  embellished  by  a  style  distin 
guished  for  purity,  taste,  and  simplicity.  Excuse  me  for  this  once,  and  I 
will  not  trespass  in  this  manner  again.  I  am  proud  to  be  able  to  trace  my 
own  lineage  back  to  the  Pilgrims  of  New  England,  and  prouder  still  that  I 
have  been  thought  deserving  of  the  esteem  and  friendship  of  some  of  the 
brightest  of  their  descendants. 

"  Permit  Mrs.  Kent  and  me  to  unite  in  presenting  our  best  respects,  and 
the  compliments  of  the  season,  to  Mrs.  Webster,  and  be  assured  of  the  con 
stant  esteem  and  regard  of  your  friend  and  most  obedient  servant, 

"  JAMES  KENT. 

"  Honorable  D.  Webster." 

Respecting  subsequent  appreciation,  it  can  only  be  necessary 
to  say  that  this  discourse  has  become  classical  in  our  literature, 
and  that  it  is  generally  regarded  as  the  corner-stone  of  Mr. 

1  William  Smith  Shaw,   founder  of  ing  the  administration  of  the  elder  he 

the  Boston  Athenaeum,  and  for  many  filled  the  office  of  private  secretary  to 

years  its  librarian,  was  a  near  relative  the  President. — (Ticknor's  Life  of  Pres- 

of  the  two  Presidents  Adams,  and  dur-  cott  the  historian,  p.  9.) 


1820.]  HIS  ORATORY.  195 

Webster's  fame  as  an  orator.  In  this  department  he  was  the 
founder  of  his  own  school,  in  which  no  one  has  become  his 
equal.  From  that  day  it  became  universally  known  that  he 
who  had  achieved  so  much  reputation  in  legislative  assemblies, 
in  the  forum,  and  in  the  councils  of  the  wise  in  civil  affairs,  was 
also  to  rank  among  the  most  eminent  of  ancient  or  modern 
orators;  and  that  whenever  men's  thoughts  and  feelings  de 
manded,  for  some  peculiarly  high  national  festival  of  the  reason 
and  the  heart,  the  interpretation  and  expression  of  the  loftiest 
eloquence,  they  were  to  turn  instinctively  to  him  to  fill  the 
noblest  cravings  of  their  intellectual  natures,  and  to  move  the 
deepest  sources  of  their  patriotism. 

"We  can  only  conjecture  what  the  literature  of  England 
might  have  contained  if  Chatham  had  been  called  upon  to  treat, 
in  a  formal,  public  discourse,  such  an  event  as  the  revolution 
which  finally  expelled  the  Stuarts ;  or  if  Burke  had  been  in 
vited  to  commemorate  the  defeat  of  the  Armada  and  all  the 
consequences  which  flowed  from  the  safety  it  insured  to  Eliza 
beth's  Protestant  throne.  But  it  has  not  been  the  habit  of 
Englishmen  to  celebrate  the  deeds  of  their  ancestors  through 
the  eloquence  of  their  greatest  living  orators,  as  it  has  been  ours. 
In  this  department  of  demonstrative  oratory  we  have  been 
more  prolific  than  any  other  nation  of  modern  times.  Yast 
numbers  of  these  productions  perish,  of  course,  at  their  birth. 
But  who  would  have  preferred  that  this  national  habit  had 
never  been  formed,  and  have  been  content  never  to  have  had 
the  Plymouth  Discourse,  the  first  Bunker  Hill  oration,  and  the 
eulogy  on  Adams  and  Jefferson,  of  Daniel  Webster?  The 
question  implies  a  loss  for  which  we  can  imagine  no  compensa 
tion.  Among  the  remains  of  ancient  oratory  there  have 
come  down  to  us  a  few  master-pieces  of  public  speech,  in 
which  we  admire  the  consummate  specimens  of  a  national  elo 
quence  and  the  undying  fruits  of  genius.  We  cannot  know 
whether  our  own  language,  after  being  lost  as  a  vernacular 
tongue,  will  be  studied  as  we  now  study  the  languages  of 
Greece  and  Rome.  But,  if,  like  them,  it  has  capacities  for 
such  preservation,  it  will  be  preserved  in  the  productions  of 
its  great  orators  as  long  as  in  any  other  of  its  forms  of  prose 
composition. 


196  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IX. 

After  the  delivery  of  the  Plymouth  Oration  in  December, 
1820,  the  whole  of  the  year  1821  was  filled  with  private  and 
professional  pursuits.  Mr.  "Webster's  engagements  at  this  time 
in  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts  and  the  Circuit  Court 
of  the  United  States  for  the  first  circuit  were  incessant.  In  the 
latter  they  embraced,  among  many  other  causes  of  no  great  pub 
lic  importance,  the  case  of  La  Jeune  Eugenie^  a  vessel  captured 
by  an  American  cruiser  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  for  being  engaged 
in  the  slave-trade,  and  sailing  at  the  time  of  capture  under  the 
French  flag  and  French  papers.  She  was  claimed,  in  the  pro 
ceedings  instituted  in  Boston,  by  French  owners  ;  and  if  such 
was  her  national  character,  she  could  be  condemned  only  upon 
the  ground  that  the  slave-trade  was  contrary  to  the  law  of  nations. 
Mr.  Webster  argued  tha-t  the  slave-trade  was  a  violation  of  the 
law  of  nations,  first,  because  it  is  contrary  to  the  law  of  nature 
which  is  a  component  part  of  the  law  of  nations ;  and  secondly, 
that,  having  been  prohibited  to  their  own  subjects  by  nearly  all 
civilized  nations,  it  might  now  be  deemed  contrary  to  the  con 
ventional  law  of  nations.  He  succeeded  in  satisfying  Mr.  Jus 
tice  Story,  before  whom  the  cause  was  heard,  that  these  were 
the  true  principles  to  be  applied  to  the  case ;  and  accordingly, 
in  May,  1822,  that  very  eminent  judge  pronounced  the  elabo 
rate  opinion  which  is  reported  in  the  second  volume  of  Mason's 
Reports,  and  in  which  he  held  that  the  African  slave-trade, 
abstractly  considered,  is  inconsistent  with  the  law  of  nations, 
and  that  a  claim  founded  upon  it  may  be  repelled  in  any  court 
where  it  is  asserted,  unless  the  trade  be  legalized  by  the  nation 
to  which  the  claimant  belongs.1 

Another  of  Mr.  "Webster's  professional  engagements  during 
this  year  consisted  in  the  defence  of  Judge  James  Prescott,  be 
fore  the  Senate  of  Massachusetts  sitting  as  a  court  for  the  trial 

1  At  the  time  when  this  case  was  ar-  opinion.     The  second  volume   of  Dod- 

gued,  the  case  of  Le  Louis,  decided  in  son's  Reports,  containing  this  judgment 

1817  by  Sir  William  Scott,  in  which  he  of  Sir  William  Scott,  appears  to  have 

held  that  trading  in  slaves  was  not  a  reached  this  country  soon  after  the  ar- 

crime  by  the  universal  law  of  nations,  gument  of  the  case  of  La  Jeune  Eugenie. 

had  not  been  published  in  the  regular  Writing  to  Judge  Story  for  a  loan  of  the 

reports  of  the  High  Court  of  Admiralty,  volume,  Mr.  Webster  said,  "  I  very  much 

but  the  decision  was    cited  and  com-  fear  my  Lord  Stowell  has  missed  a  fig- 

mented  on  in  the  argument  of  the  case  ure.     However,  I   suppose,  as  usual,  he 

of  La  Jeune  Eugenie,  and  was  directly  has  given  plausible  reasons."    (Compare 

dissented  from  by  Judge  Story  in  his  2  Dodson,  210,  and  2  Mason,  409.) 


1822,]  ELECTED  TO   CONGRESS  FROM  BOSTON.  197 

of  an  impeachment.  Prescott  was  for  twenty  years  judge  of 
probate  for  the  county  of  Middlesex ;  and,  after  a  course  of 
generally  useful  and  respectable  administration  of  the  duties  of 
that  office,  he  was  impeached  on  charges  of  having  taken  illegal 
fees  from  persons  having  business  in  his  court.  The  charge  did 
not  extend  to  bribery,  but  only  to  the  taking  of  fees  for  official 
services  to  which  no  fee  was  attached  by  law,  and  to  the  hold 
ing  of  special  courts  not  authorized  by  statute.  The  whole 
prosecution  involved  only  some  very  paltry  sums,  received  or 
demanded  by  the  judge  doubtless  imprudently  and  indelicately ; 
and  the  impeachment  itself  developed  a  very  strong  illustration 
of  the  public  inexpediency  of  compensating  judges  by  fees 
instead  of  by  fixed  salaries — a  practice  which  was  then  discon 
tinued  in  Massachusetts  in  relation  to  all  judges  except  the 
judges  of  probate,  but  which  has  since  been  totally  changed  in 
that  Commonwealth,  as  it  has  been  elsewhere.  The  case  was 
attended  with  a  good  deal  of  excitement  and  prejudice,  but  the 
unfortunate  judge  could  scarcely  be  said  to  have  acted  cor 
ruptly.  Mr.  Webster  felt  much  compassion  for  him,  especially 
as  the  articles  exhibited  against  him  were  somewhat  vague.  In 
a  very  powerful  argument,  which  is  preserved  among  Mr.  Web 
ster's  works,  he  reasoned — with  that  close  and  penetrating  logic 
which  was  so  characteristic  of  him,  and  which  was  all  that  he 
could  bring  to  bear  upon  a  case  whose  aspect  was  bad — that  the 
charges  had  not  been  set  forth  and  proved  with  the  reasonable 
accuracy  and  certainty  which  the  law  and  the  constitution 
required.  In  this  respect,  the  argument  will  always  remain  an 
important  source  of  information  concerning  the  principles  of 
accusation  and  proof  that  ought  to  be  followed  on  the  trial  of 
impeachments.  Its  well-known  exordium  stands  as  one  of  the 
most  impressive  specimens  of  Mr.  Webster's  forensic  eloquence.1 
While  Mr.  Webster  was  engaged  in  the  diligent  practice  of 
his  profession,  from  which  his  emoluments  at  this  time  were 
very  large,  he  was  unexpectedly  and  strongly  solicited  in  the 
autumn  of  1822,  by  many  leading  gentlemen  in  Boston,  to 
become  their  Representative  in  the  next  Congress.  A  meeting 
of  delegates  from  all  the  wards  of  the  city  appointed  a  com 
mittee  to  wait  upon  him  and  urge  his  acceptance  of  a  nomina- 

1  Works,  v.,  502-545. 


198  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  IX. 

tion.  One  of  these  gentlemen,  on  the  day  after  this  committee 
was  appointed,  entered  Mr.  Webster's  office,  and  found  him 
reading.  "  Mr.  "Webster,"  said  his  visitor,  "  I  come  to  ask  you 
to  throw  down  your  law-books  and  enter  the  service  of  the 
public ;  for  to  the  public  you  belong.  I  know  what  sacrifices 
we  demand  of  you,  but  we  must  rely  on  your  patriotism.  We 
cannot  take  a  refusal." 1  A  few  days  afterward,  a  formal 
requisition,  signed  by  all  the  committee,  was  presented  to  him, 
and  he  had  to  make  a  decision  on  this,  as  I  believe  it  to  have 
been  to  him,  not  very  welcome  application.  It  is  not  improb 
able  that  he  may  have  looked  forward  to  a  return  to  public  life 
in  some  other  position  than  one  which  he  had  formerly  filled. 
He  had  not  ceased  to  take  a  strong  interest  in  whatever  con 
cerned  the  country  or  in  what  was  passing  abroad ;  he  was  con 
scious  of  his  own  great  aptitude  for  political  discussions,  and  he 
undoubtedly  had  that  within  him  for  which  the  exercise  of 
his  powers  in  the  walks  of  his  profession,  however  high  they 
lay  along  the  roads  to  fame,  was  not  a  complete  satisfaction. 
But  he  had  two  very  good  reasons  for  not  being  entirely  pleased 
with  the  invitation  of  his  Boston  friends.  His  circumstances 
were  not  so  independent  as  he  hoped  in  a  few  years  more  of 
professional  labor  to  make  them ; a  and  having  once  served 
with  distinction  in  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  and  volun 
tarily  retired  from  it,  he  did  not  particularly  wish,  at  the  age 
of  forty,  to  return  to  that  body.  But  he  had  become  an  adopted 
citizen  of  Massachusetts,  where  he  had  been  welcomed  with  the 
highest  respect  and  consideration,  and  he  did  not  think  that  it 
became  him  to  reject  the  proposed  honor  of  representing  such  a 
city  as  Boston  in  the  halls  of  Congress.  He  accepted  the  nom 
ination,  and  was  elected  that  autumn  by  a  very  large  majority 
of  the  votes. 

1  The  late  William  Sturgis,  Esq.,  the  clared  insolvent,  according  to  the  pro- 
gentleman  referred  to,  was  himself  my  visions  of  the  New-Hampshire  law ;  and 
authority  for  this  anecdote.  the  consequence  was,  that  his  father's 

2  It  has  been   stated  in  a  previous  debts   remained  a   heavy   burden   upon 
chapter  that  Mr.  Webster  assumed  the  him,  from  which  he  did  not  free  himself 
payment  of  his  father's  debts.    He  would  until   some  time   after  his  removal  to 
not  suffer  his  father's  estate  to  be  de-  Boston. 


1823.]  MR.  WEBSTER  REENTERS  CONGRESS.  199 


CHAPTEK   X. 
1823-1824. 

REENTERS     CONGRESS SPEECH     ON      THE      GREEK      REVOLUTION 

TARIFF   OF   1824 PROPOSED   CHANGES   IN   THE    JUDICIAL   SYSTEM 

— THE   CASE   OF   GIBBONS  VS.   OGDEN CANDIDACY  OF  MR.   JOHN 

QTJINCY  ADAMS — FIRST  VISIT    TO    MARSHFIELD — REFLECTED    TO 
CONGRESS. 

O^N"  the  return  of  Mr.  Webster  to  Congress  in  December, 
1823,  after  a  retirement  of  six  years,  he  brought  a  great 
access  of  reputation ;  for,  although  he  had  been  so  long  out  of 
public  station,  he  had  not  been  withdrawn  from  the  public  eye ; 
and  the  opportunities  of  distinction,  which  he  had  foregone  by 
abstinence  from  political  affairs,  had  been  more  than  compen 
sated  by  the  fame  which  he  had  acquired  as  a  lawyer  and  an 
orator,  and  which  now  filled  the  country.  His  course  was 
likely  to  be  watched  with  great  interest  by  all,  with  some 
degree  of  jealousy  by  a  few.  The  "Federal"  party,  with 
which  he  had  acted  during  his  former  service  in  Congress,  was 
no  longer  an  existing  organization;  and  such  had  been  the 
effect  of  Mr.  Monroe's  administration  on  former  political  dis 
tinctions,  that  there  could  scarcely  be  said  to  be  any  well-defined 
"  Republican  "  party  remaining.  But  the  old  party  feelings, 
although  much  abated,  had  not  entirely  worn  themselves  out, 
nor  had  the  old  names  wholly  ceased  to  be  used.  A  person  of 
so  much  distinction,  therefore,  as  Mr.  Webster,  who  had  been 
regarded  as  a  Federalist,  in  coming  again  into  Congress,  came 


200  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  X. 

among  some  who  were  not  likely  to  forget  that  he  had  been 
their  political  opponent. 

Mr.  Clay  was  chosen  Speaker.  Friendly,  although  not  in 
timate,  personal  relations  had  all  along  existed  between  him 
and  Mr.  Webster;  but  Mr.  Clay  had  been  an  ardent  leader 
during  the  war  on  the  side  of  an  Administration,  some  of  whose 
measures  Mr.  "Webster  had  felt  it  to  be  his  duty  to  oppose.  Mr. 
Clay  was  now  one  of  five  or  six  candidates  for  the  presidency 
from  among  whom  a  choice  was  to  be  made,  but  he  probably 
did  not  count  upon  the  support  of  Mr.  Webster.  The  latter 
entertained  a  sincere  respect  for  Mr.  Clay's  public  character, 
and  regarded  him  as  a  liberal  and  honorable  man,  not  un 
friendly  in  his  general  feeling ;  yet  he  did  not  anticipate  that, 
in  the  organization  and  arrangement  of  the  affairs  of  the  House, 
Mr.  Clay  would  venture  entirely  to  disregard  old  lines  of  dis 
tinction,  although  he  supposed  that  in  his  own  case  the  Speaker 
would  not  be  afraid  to  shake  off  any  party  trammels  that  might 
have  formerly  existed.  The  result  was,  that,  without  any  com 
munication  between  them  or  their  respective  friends,  Mr.  Clay 
placed  Mr.  Webster  at  the  head  of  the  Judiciary  Committee ; 
an  appointment  which,  under  all  the  circumstances,  was  the 
most  fit  which  he  could  have  made,  and  one  that  was  doubtless 
made  from  a  sense  of  its  fitness. 

In  the  presidential  election  that  was  then  approaching,  Mr. 
Webster  felt  less  interest  than  he  did  in  another  subject.  He 
had  long  been  an  anxious  observer  of  the  heroic  struggle  which 
the  Greeks  had  maintained  against  their  Turkish  oppressors ; 
he  had  studied  the  civil  and  military  aspects  of  the  Greek 
Revolution  with  the  closest  attention :  he  had  become  satisfied 
that  the  Greeks  had  character  enough  to  carry  them  through 
the  contest  with  success ;  and  he  not  only  felt,  in  common  with 
the  whole  people  of  this  country,  a  warm  sympathy  in  their 
cause,  but  he  saw,  as  not  many  others  did,  in  the  principles  and 
policy  proclaimed  by  the  allied  governments  of  Europe,  and  in 
the  general  indifference  of  the  statesmen  of  Europe  to  the  result 
of  this  contest,  great  cause  of  danger  to  liberty  throughout 
the  world.  He  determined  therefore  to  do  or  say  something  in 
behalf  of  the  Greeks  at  an  early  period  of  the  session. 

Before  deciding  on  the  step  to  be  taken,  he  conferred  with 


1824.]  THE  GREEK  REVOLUTION.  201 

Mr.  Rufus  King,  Mr.  Clay,  and  other  gentlemen,  all  of  whom 
approved  of  what  he  proposed  to  do.  He  also  consulted  the 
President ;  but,  as  the  message,  which  Mr.  Monroe  was  about 
to  send  in  to  Congress,  had  taken  high  ground  as  to  inter 
ference  by  European  powers  in  the  affairs  of  this  continent,  he 
was  reluctant  to  have  the  appearance  of  interfering  in  the  con 
cerns  of  the  other.  This  did  not  weigh  much  writh  Mr.  "Web 
ster,  who  thought  that  "  we  have  as  much  community  with  the 
Greeks  as  with  the  inhabitants  of  the  Andes  and  the  dwellers 
on  the  borders  of  the  Yermilion  Sea." 1  The  message,  however, 
when  it  appeared,  was  found  to  contain  an  expression  of  sym 
pathy  for  the  Greeks,  which  was  closed  with  something  very 
like  an  official  statement  that  they  were  to  be  regarded  as  hav 
ing  in  fact  achieved  their  independence.  "From  the  facts," 
said  the  President,  "  which  have  come  to  our  knowledge,  there 
is  good  cause  to  believe  that  their  enemy  has  lost  forever  all 
dominion  over  them ;  that  Greece  will  become  an  independent 
power.  That  she  may  attain  that  rank  is  the  object  of  our 
most  ardent  wishes."  a 

After  the  House  had  been  in  session  a  few  days,  Mr.  "Web 
ster  introduced  the  following  resolution : 

"  That  provision  ought  to  be  made  by  law  for  defraying  the  expense 
incident  to  the  appointment  of  an  agent  or  commissioner  to  Greece,  when 
ever  the  President  shall  deem  it  expedient  to  make  such  appointment." 

After  a  few  explanatory  remarks,  he  desired  that  the  resolu 
tion  might  lie  upon  the  table.  It  was  taken  up  in  Committee 
of  the  "Whole  on  the  19th  of  January.  A  large  and  fashionable 
audience  had  assembled  in  the  galleries  to  hear  Mr.  "Webster. 
It  was  supposed  that  he  meant  to  take  advantage  of  the  almost 
universal  popular  sympathy  for  the  Greeks,  and  the  classical 
associations  of  the  subject,  in  order  to  make  a  brilliant  oration, 
which  would  bring  him  again  before  the  public  with  renewed 
eclat.3  Nothing  could  have  been  further  from  his  purpose. 
The  crowds  which  had  come  to  listen  to  an  anticipated  display 
of  rhetoric,  or  the  members  who  supposed  that  he  contemplated 
a  "  move  "  on  the  political  chess-board,  were  astonished  at  the 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  332,  333.  promulgated    the    famous    (so-called) 

2  Mr.  Monroe's  message  of  December    "  Monroe  Doctrine." 

2,  1823.     This  was  the  message  which          8  Philadelphia  Quarterly  for  1831. 


202  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  X. 

development  which  he  made  of  the  subject,  and  the  direction 
which  he  gave  to  it.  Instead  of  addressing  himself  to  the 
vague  sympathies  of  the  popular  heart,  he  proceeded  to  en 
lighten  and  instruct  the  public  mind,  not  only  of  America  but 
of  Europe,  respecting  the  principles  which  had  been  announced 
by  the  "  Holy  Alliance,"  as  the  basis  on  which  they  intended 
to  resist  the  efforts  of  any  people  to  change  their  government 
or  their  political  relations.  He  analyzed  all  the  European  Con 
gresses,  from  that  of  Paris  in  1814,  to  that  of  Laybach  in  1821, 
and  brought  into  prominent  relief  the  doctrines  which  resulted 
from  them — that  all  sovereigns  have  an  interest  and  a  right  to 
control  all  nations  in  any  attempt  which  they  may  make  against 
the  government  that  is  over  them.  He  denounced  this  principle 
as  an  infraction  of  the  public  law,  and  maintained  that  the  lib 
erty  of  every  civilized  people  on  the  globe  was  concerned  in 
putting  it  down. 

This  state  of  things,  he  contended,  called  emphatically  upon 
us,  not  for  direct  interference,  but  for  an  expression  of  our  opin 
ion  in  terms  that  could  not  be  mistaken.  The  present  age  was 
characterized  by  a  tendency  to  limited  governments;  the  en 
lightened  part  of  mankind  had  very  distinctly  evinced  a  desire 
to  take  a  share,  at  least,  in  the  government  of  themselves.  But 
there  was  an  antagonistic  principle  at  work,  which,  if  not 
resisted,  would  prostrate  the  liberties  of  the  whole  civilized 
world.  "  They  are  doctrines,"  said  Mr.  Webster,  "  which  have 
been  conceived  with  great  sagacity,  they  are  pursued  with  un 
broken  perseverance,  and  they  bring  to  their  support  a  million 
and  a  half  of  bayonets." 

"  It  was  not  by  war,"  he  continued,  "  that  we  were  to 
propagate  our  sentiments  in  favor  of  the  liberties  of  mankind. 
Formerly,  indeed,  there  was  no  means  of  making  an  impression 
on  nations  but  by  fleets  and  armies;  but  the  age  had  under 
gone  a  change  ;  there  is  now  a  force  in  public  opinion,  which, 
in  the  end,  will  outweigh  all  the  physical  force  that  can  be 
brought  against  it." 

He  then  passed  to  the  modern  history  of  Greece,  her  suffer 
ings,  and  the  apathy  with  which  the  neighboring  nations,  pro 
fessedly  Christian,  had  looked  on ;  an  apathy,  he  said,  which 
was  a  disgrace  to  Europe.  A  rapid  survey  of  the  progress 


1824.]  THE  GREEK  REVOLUTION.  203 

and  present  condition  of  the  Greek  Revolution  followed,  which 
brought  him  to  the  position  taken  in  the  President's  message, 
with  which,  he  contended,  his  resolution  was  in  entire  har 
mony,  for  it  proposed  nothing  but  to  enable  the  President  to 
send  a  commissioner  to  Greece  whenever  he  should  think 
proper.  Its  passage  would  violate  no  neutrality,  break  no 
engagements  with  the  Porte,  for  we  had  none ;  but  it  would 
assure  the  Greeks  of  our  sympathy,  and  inspire  them  with 
fresh  constancy  in  their  struggle.  "  I  cannot  say,  sir,"  he  con 
cluded,  "  that  they  will  succeed ;  that  rests  with  Heaven.  But, 
for  myself,  if  I  should  hear  to-morrow  that  they  have  failed, 
that  their  last  phalanx  had  sunk  beneath  the  Turkish  scimetar, 
that  the  flames  of  their  last  city  had  gone  down  into  its  ashes, 
and  that  naught  remained  but  the  wide,  melancholy  waste 
where  Greece  once  was,  I  should  still  reflect,  with  the  most 
heartfelt  satisfaction,  that  I  have  asked  you,  in  the  name  of 
seven  millions  of  freemen,  that  you  would  give  them,  at  least, 
the  cheering  of  one  friendly  voice." 

When  Mr.  "Webster  had  concluded  his  speech,  Mr.  Clay  laid 
upon  the  table  a  resolution  which  declared  that  the  people  of 
the  United  States  would  not  see,  without  serious  inquietude, 
any  forcible  interposition  by  the  allied  powers  in  behalf 
of  Spain,  to  reduce  the  South-American  republics  to  their 
former  subjection.  The  discussion  then  went  on  upon  Mr. 
Webster's  resolution  concerning  Greece.  The  cry  of  "  Quixot 
ism  "  was  immediately  raised,  especially  by  Mr.  Randolph,  who 
attacked  both  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Clay  with  his  usual  sar 
casm.  The  resolutions  of  both,  he  said,  led  to  war.  An  effort 
was  made  to  have  the  committee  rise.  This  called  up  Mr. 
Clay,  who  defended  Mr.  Webster's  resolution  as  well  as  his 
own  ;  the  latter  he  did  not  mean  to  press  at  that  time,  but  he 
advocated  the  passage  of  the  former  at  once.  A  long  discussion 
ensued,  in  the  course  of  which  Mr.  Clay  came  out  in  great 
force  in  further  defence  of  Mr.  Webster's  proposition.  He  saw 
that  much  of  the  opposition  to  it  was  personal,  and  he  at  once 
administered  a  rebuke  to  the  party  feeling  which  dictated  that 
opposition  in  his  most  spirited  manner.  He  said  : 

"  I  know  that,  at  least,  some  of  the  objections  to  the  original  proposal 
are  occasioned  by  the  source  from  which  it  proceeded.  There  are  indi- 


204  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  X. 

viduals  in  this  House  who  look  at  the  mover  of  this  resolution  as  if  its 
value  or  importance  were  to  be  measured  by  inquiring  who  brought  it  for 
ward.  Sir,  I  have  long  had  the  pleasure  of  knowing  the  honorable  gentle 
man  who  originated  this  resolution ;  I  have  sometimes  had  the  pleasure 
of  acting  with  him ;  and  I  would  suggest  to  those  to  whom  I  have  alluded, 
that,  if  they  seek  to  be  regarded  as  the  sentinels  of  freedom,  they  must  dis 
regard  the  source  from  which  any  measure  favorable  to  its  interest  may 
happen  to  have  proceeded,  and  must  take  it  upon  its  own  intrinsic  merits. 
If  a  gentleman,  who  happens  to  belong  to  a  different  party,  in  political 
sentiment,  shall  bring  forward  a  proposition  fraught  with  liberal  principles 
and  noble  sentiments,  is  it  to  be  rejected  for  his  sake  ?  If  this  is  the 
case,  we  cease  to  be  Republicans ;  and  those  who  act  on  principles  the 
reverse  of  ours  will  be  the  men  who  truly  deserve  that  name  ;  and,  sir,  if 
all  Republicans  must  oppose  this  doctrine,  and  all  Federalists  advocate 
it,  I,  for  one,  shall  cease  to  be  a  Republican,  and  shall  become  a  Feder 
alist." 

Mr.  Clay  could  always  be  stung  by  the  taunts  of  Mr.  Ran 
dolph,  and,  on  this  occasion,  his  indignation  kindled  all  the 
fires  of  his  eloquence,  and  pointed  it  with  his  utmost  scorn, 
which  he  doubtless  unbridled  the  more  readily,  as  he  was  con 
scious  that  a  "great  public  sentiment  existed  behind  him,  that 
would  justify  the  adoption  of  Mr.  "Webster's  resolution.  His 
speech  was  bold,  decisive,  and  uncompromising.  "  Go  home," 
he  said,  in  conclusion,  "  go  home,  if  you  dare ;  go  home,  if  you 
can,  to  your  constituents,  and  tell  them  that  you  voted  it  down. 
Meet,  if  you  dare,  the  appalling  countenances  of  those  who  sent 
you  here  (he  meant  no  defiance),  and  tell  them  that  you  shrank 
from  the  declaration  of  your  own  sentiments  ;  that  you  cannot 
tell  how,  but  that  some  unknown  dread,  some  indescribable 
apprehension,  some  indefinable  danger,  affrighted  you  ;  that  the 
spectres  of  scimetars  and. crowns  and  crescents  gleamed  before 
you,  and  alarmed  you ;  and  that  you  suppressed  all  the  noble 
feelings  prompted  by  religion,  by  liberty,  by  national  indepen 
dence,  and  by  humanity."  He  could  not  bring  himself  to  believe, 
Mr.  Clay  said,  that  such  would  be  the  feeling  of  a  majority 
of  this  House.  But,  for  himself,  though  every  friend  of  the 
measure  should  desert  it,  and  he  be  left  to  stand  alone  with  the 
gentleman  from  Massachusetts,  he  would  give  to  the  resolution 
the  poor  sanction  of  his  unqualified  approbation.1 

1  Annals  of  Congress;  Eighteenth  Congress,  1171-1177. 


1824.]  THE  GREEK  REVOLUTION.  205 

The  discussion  was  further  continued  until  the  26th  of 
January,  when,  in  consequence  of  the  unwillingness  manifested 
either  to  adopt  Mr.  "Webster's  resolution,  or  any  modification 
of  it,  he  consented  that  the  Committee  of  the  Whole  should  rise 
without  taking  a  vote.  But  his  purpose  was  answered.  He 
had  drawn  the  attention  of  the  world  to  the  principles  on  which 
the  Holy  Alliance  was  arrayed  against  the  liberties  of  nations. 
His  speech,  we  are  told  by  one  who  watched  its  circulation  and 
influence,  u  besides  being  printed  wherever  the  English  tongue 
is  spoken,  has  been  circulated  through  South  America,  and 
published  in  nearly  every  one  of  the  civilized  languages  of 
Europe,  including  the  Spanish  and  Greek."  1  At  the  time  this 
statement  was  publicly  made  (1831),  Mr.  Webster  could  coolly 
review  the  object  which  he  had  in  view  in  making  the  Greek 
speech  of  1824.  The  following  note,  now  before  me,  in  MS., 
from  him  to  the  writer  of  the  article  in  the  Philadelphia  Quar 
terly,  will  be  read  with  interest : 

"  One  word  about  the  Greek  speech.  I  think  I  am  more  fond  of  this 
child  than  of  any  of  the  family.  My  object,  when  the  resolution  was  intro 
duced,  was  not  understood.  It  was  imagined  that,  seeing  the  existence 
of  a  warm  public  sympathy  for  the  suffering  Greeks,  the  purpose  was  only 
to  make  a  speech  responsive  and  gratifying  to  that  sympathy.  The  real 
object  was  larger.  It  was  to  take  occasion  of  the  Greek  Revolution,  and 
the  conduct  held  in  regard  to  it  by  the  great  Continental  powers,  to 
exhibit  the  principles  laid  down  by  those  powers,  as  the  basis  on  which 
they  meant  to  maintain  the  peace  of  Europe.  This  purpose  made  it 
necessary  to  examine  accurately  the  proceedings  of  all  the  Congresses,  from 
that  of  Paris,  in  1814,  to  that  of  Laybach,  in  1821.  I  read  those  proceed 
ings  with  a  good  deal  of  attention,  and  endeavored  to  extract  the  principle 
on  which  they  were  founded.  There  is  nothing  in  the  book2  which  I  think 
so  well  of  as  parts  of  this  speech.  Events  have  shown  that  some  opinions 
here  expressed  were  well  founded.  A  revolution  has  taken  place,  and  the 
people  reform  their  constitution,  and  then  invite  an  individual  to  the 
throne,  on  condition  of  governing  according  to  the  constitution.3  Belgium 
is  doing  the  same ;  Poland  is  attempting  to  do  the  same.  This  is  in  the 
spirit  of  the  English  Revolution  of  1688;  but  it  is  '  flat  burglary '  according 
to  the  law  of  Laybach. 

"  I  was  something  of  a  prophet,  too,  in  regard  to  the  duration  of  the 
late  French  monarchy.     See  Plymouth  Discourse.     But  enough;   I  am 

1  Philadelphia  Quarterly  for  1831.          gentleman  to  whom  the  note  was  ad- 
3  The  edition  of  hig  speeches,  then     dressed, 
recently  published,  and  reviewed  by  the          3  The  case  of  Louis  Philippe. 


206  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  X. 

tired  of  saying  '  I,'  '  me,'  and  '  mine.'  My  dear  sir,  if  the  world  cannot  see 
the  merits  of  my  illustrious  works,  why  should  I  (or  why  should  you) 
trouble  ourselves  to  point  them  out  ? " 

Before  leaving  the  Greek  speech,  it  may  be  well  to  say  that 
it  was  a  common  complaint  among  Mr.  Webster's  friends,  at 
that  time,  that  he  took  but  little  pains  in  the  publication  of  his 
speeches.  On  this  occasion  Mr.  Hopkinson  wrote  to  him  : 

"  You  are  generally  too  careless  of  yourself  and  your  reputation  ;  and, 
content  with  doing  a  thing  well,  you  have  too  little  solicitude  about  the 
proof  of  it  to  the  world.  Your  views  of  the  character,  object,  and  extent 
of  the  Holy  Alliance,  have  particularly  attracted  public  attention  for  their 
strength  and  novelty  in  many  particulars.  Develop  yourself  fully  on  this 
subject ;  it  is  of  vast  interest,  and  may  be  illustrated  with  great  force  by 
their  declarations  and  conduct  for  the  last  two  years.  It  is,  in  one  respect, 
a  misfortune  for  a  man  to  obtain  a  high  eminence  of  character ;  he  is  re 
quired  always  to  maintain  it,  and  this  calls  for  a  constant  vigilance  and 
effort,  which  are  not  always  convenient.  Besides,  few  have  judgment  to 
know  of  what  a  subject  is  capable,  and  expect  to  see  the  same  power  dis 
played,  whether  an  oak  is  to  be  uprooted,  or  a  rose  plucked  from  its  bush. 
I  agree  with  Mr.  Randolph,  in  his  surprise  that  you  should  find  so  much 
to  be  well  said  on  your  resolution.  It  is  only  a  mind  of  great  resources, 
with  a  genius  creative  and  prolific,  that  could  have  connected  it  with  so 
much  important  and  interesting  matter.  Not  one  of  your  opponents  has 
met  you  fairly  on  your  own  ground.  Some  have  treated  the  resolution 
as  an  abstract  declaration  of  war,  and  others  have  assumed  that  it  would 
certainly  lead  to  war ;  and  thus,  mounted  on  a  monster  of  their  own  crea 
tion,  they  have  gone  off  at  full  speed,  spreading  devastation  and  terror  in 
their  path.  It  is  thus  with  men  who  must  speak,  and  can't  argue.  Of 
this  genus  I  have  seen  so  many,  especially  in  the  great  hall  of  Congress, 
that  I  know  them  from  the  first  jump  they  take." 

Prompted  by  this  friendly  advice,  Mr.  "Webster  did  prepare 
a  suitable  report  of  this  speech,  which  is  substantially  the  same 
with  that  now  contained  in  the  third  volume  of  his  works.  But 
he  pruned  the  actual  speech  a  good  deal  when  this  edition  was 
published,  in  1851,  and  perhaps  did  it  some  injustice,  as  he  was 
apt  to  do,  from  the  severity  with  which  he  occasionally  handled 
his  own  productions.  A  contemporaneous  report,  that  appeared 
in  the  National  Intelligencer,  is  somewhat  more  full,  although 
it  wants  the  animation  of  the  first  pronoun.1 

1  This  report  is  repeated  in  the  Annals  of  Congress,  Eighteenth  Congress,  first 
session. 


1824."!  TARIFF  OF   1824.  207 

The  President's  message,  at  the  opening  of  this  session,  had 
recommended  a  revision  of  the  tariff;  and  accordingly  an 
elaborate  bill  was  prepared  and  first  reported  to  the  House, 
which  gave  rise  to  a  memorable  discussion,  in  which  a  high 
protective  tariff  first  received  from  Mr.  Clay  (its  principal  ad 
vocate)  the  name  of  the  "  American  system."  As  Mr.  Web 
ster's  early  relation  to  this  subject  has  sometimes  been  misun 
derstood,  it  will  be  necessary  to  recur  to  the  opinions  which  he 
had  hitherto  held.  The  reader  has  already  seen  that,  in  1814, 
he  declared  himself  not  to  be  in  favor  of  a  policy  which  would 
force  capital  into  manufactures  faster  than  it  would  naturally 
find  its  way  into  them  without  the  direct  influence  of  legisla 
tion.1  In  1816,  when  the  principle  of  protection  to  domestic 
manufactures,  advocated  by  Mr.  Calhoun,  was  first  introduced 
into  our  revenue  system  as  an  incidental  object  of  the  regula 
tion  and  imposition  of  duties  on  foreign  goods,  Mr.  Webster, 
as  I  have  already  said,  confined  himself  to  the  procurement  of 
such  duties  on  particular  commodities,  as  would  be  likely  to 
afford  a  settled  and  steady  policy  in  relation  to  the  principal 
branches  of  manufacture.  From  1816  to  1823  he  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  out  of  Congress.  In  the  mean  time,  the  effect  of  the 
tariff  of  1816  had  been  to  stimulate  the  investment  of  capital 
still  more  in  manufacturing  establishments,  especially  of  cotton 
and  wool,  and  there  were  indications  that  a  policy  of  direct 
protection  and  encouragement  by  the  means  of  still  higher  du 
ties,  laid  for  this  express  purpose,  would  be  substituted  for  the 
tariff  then  in  operation.  Under  these  circumstances  a  meeting 
was  held  in  Faneuil  Hall  in  Boston,  in  1820,  for  the  purpose 
of  opposing  a  still  further  extension  of  this  principle.  Mr. 
"Webster,  although  not  in  public  position  at  that  time,  was  in 
vited  to  attend  and  address  this  meeting,  because  his  general 
sentiments  on  the  subject  were  known  to  be  opposed  to  any 
other  measure  of  protection  than  that  which  is  incidental  to 
the  collection  of  sufficient  revenue  for  the  wants  of  Govern 
ment,  and  which  can  be  adjusted  from  time  to  time  to  the  par 
ticular  situation  of  all  the  industries  of  the  country.  Previous 
to  this  time,  the  right  to  afford  protection  to  domestic  manu 
factures  against  foreign  competition  was  placed  by  its  advo- 

1  Ante,  chap.  v. 


208  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  X. 

cates  upon  the  ground  that  it  is  a  power  incidental  to  the 
power  of  laying  and  collecting  revenue ;  and  Mr.  "Webster 
argued,  in  his  speech  at  Faneuil  Hall,  that,  if  protection  is  an 
incident  to  revenue,  the  incident  cannot  fairly  be  carried  be 
yond  the  principal,  and  that  duties  laid  for  the  mere  object  of 
protection  are  beyond  the  scope  of  the  power  under  which  it 
was  claimed  that  they  might  be  imposed.  This  opinion,  so  far 
as  the  revenue  power  is  concerned  as  the  source  of  protective 
duties,  Mr.  "Webster  substantially  held  to  the  end  of  his  life ; 
that  is  to  say,  if  the  power  of  protection  is  to  be  inferred  solely 
from  the  revenue  power,  the  protection  can  only  be  incidental. 
But,  when  he  first  expressed  this  opinion  in  1820,  Mr.  Madi 
son's  papers  and  other  publications,  which  throw  a  great  deal 
of  light  upon  the  commercial  clause  in  the  Constitution,  as  in 
tended  by  its  framers  to  embrace  the  power  of  protecting 
domestic  industries,  had  not  appeared.  This  fact  is  important 
to  be  observed,  in  speaking  of  Mr.  "Webster's  views  of  1820. 
In  what  he  said  in  1820  on  the  subject  of  power,  he  had  noth 
ing  in  view  but  the  revenue  power.  On  the  question  of  policy, 
he  did  undoubtedly  at  that  time  oppose  earnestly  the  further 
extension  of  a  principle  of  legislation  which  would,  as  he  be 
lieved,  give  an  artificial  stimulus  to  some  branches  of  industry, 
operate  to  the  injury  of  maritime  commerce,  and  introduce 
among  us  the  system  of  prohibitions  and  monopolies  which  had 
long  been  followed,  but  which  were  beginning  to  be  questioned, 
in  England. 

From  1820  to  1824,  partly  in  consequence  of  the  changes  of 
capital  brought  about  by  the  influence  of  the  tariff  of  1816 ; 
partly  by  the  fall  of  prices  everywhere,  consequent  upon  the 
general  peace  in  Europe,  and  the  efforts  to  return  to  a  basis  of 
specie  payments  both  abroad  and  at  home,  and  from  other  less 
palpable  causes,  there  was  a  general  commercial  depression 
throughout  this  country.  The  opinion  was  then  embraced  by 
some  leading  minds,  especially  by  Mr.  Clay,  that  the  true 
remedy  for  this  state  of  things  was  to  encourage  still  more  the 
development  of  manufactures  among  us,  and,  by  a  system  of 
high  protection,  to  raise  up  a  larger  home  market  for  agricul 
tural  products  generally,  and  also  to  bring  about  the  employ 
ment  of  our  own  iron,  hemp,  and  other  articles  which  are  con- 


1824.]  TARIFF   OF   1824.  209 

sumed  in  ship-building,  to  the  exclusion  of  foreign  materials. 
In  seeking  for  a  means  of  naturalizing  the  arts  in  this  country, 
Mr.  Clay  became  satisfied  that  we  "  must  resort  to  the  same 
method  which  the  wisdom  of  other  nations  had  found  to  be 
alone  effectual,  namely,  adequate  protection  against  the  other 
wise  overwhelming  influence  of  foreign  competition."  How 
far  Mr.  Clay  was  personally  concerned  in  arranging  the  details 
of  the  tariff  bill  of  1824  does  not  appear ;  but  it  is  certain  that 
when  he  came  forward  and  made  that  measure  his  own,  and 
laid  at  its  foundation  the  principle  of  a  high  protective  tariff, 
as  the  means  of  remedying  the  existing  commercial  depression, 
and  of  launching  the  country  upon  a  new  career  of  prosperity, 
he  carried  the  principle  in  argument  to  the  full  extent  to  which 
it  had  been  carried  in  England,  and  relied  mainly  upon  the  ex 
ample  of  England  as  his  justification.  It  is  also  certain  that 
the  tariff  bill  of  1824  as  it  stood  before  the  House,  was  so  con 
structed  that  many  persons,  like  Mr.  Webster,  who  would  have 
been  in  favor  of  some  of  its  provisions  had  they  stood  alone, 
could  not  vote  for  others  on  account  of  their  injurious  operation 
upon  interests  which  they  were  bound  to  regard.  But  the 
measure  was  pressed  as  a  whole,  and  as  the  establishment  of  a 
system,  of  which  the  encouragement  of  manufactures,  through 
the  direct  operation  of  high  protective  duties,  was  the  avowed 
object  and  the  corner-stone. 

Of  course,  a  measure  of  this  kind,  so  constructed,  and 
brought  forward  as  a  system  which  was  confessedly  an  imitation 
of  that  which  was  supposed,  rightfully  or  wrongfully,  to  have 
created  the  prosperity  of  England,  encountered  opposition. 
As  a  matter  of  course,  too,  introduced  as  it  was  at  a  time  when 
the  navigating  interests  were  laboring  under  the  unfavorable 
effects  produced  by  the  tariff  of  1816,  when  the  ship-builder 
needed  to  purchase  his  materials  at  the  lowest  possible  rates, 
and  when  the  ship-owner  needed  all  the  freights  that  he  could 
command — it  must  lead  those  who  represented  such  interests 
to  look  carefully  at  the  application  of  a  principle  that  was  now 
to  be  carried  further  than  it  had  ever  been  carried  before.  It 
was  equally  certain  that  there  must  be  great  differences  of 
opinion  upon  the  question  whether  the  true  mode  of  benefit 
ing  the  agricultural  classes  of  such  a  country  as  this,  is,  to  shut 
15 


210  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  fCn.  X 

up  the  consumption  of  their  products  within  a  home  market, 
or  even  to  create  a  state  of  things  which  has  a  decided  tendency 
in  that  direction ;  and  that  there  also  must  be  great  doubts 
whether  they  are  benefited  by  making  it  necessary  for  them 
to  abstain  from  the  use  of  a  foreign  manufactured  article,  in 
order  to  avoid  the  payment  of  a  tax  which  is  imposed  for  the 
benefit  of  a  domestic  manufacturer.  But  it  is  no  part  of  my 
purpose  to  enter  into  the  discussion  of  these  great  questions 
of  political  economy,  which  have  not  even  yet  reached  a 
wholly  satisfactory  solution ;  but  the  general  aspects  of  the 
subject  are  here  alluded  to,  as  it  presented  itself  in  1824,  for 
the  purpose  of  guarding  the  reader  against  any  erroneous 
views  of  the  opinions  and  course  of  Mr.  "Webster  on  that 
occasion. 

The  bill  of  1824  had  been  pending  for  some  time  in  Com 
mittee  of  the  "Whole,  in  a  desultory  debate  on  its  multifarious 
provisions  and  its  general  principle,  when,  on  the  31st  of 
March,  Mr.  Clay  availed  himself  of  a  convenient  opportunity 
to  develop  the  general  policy  of  the  measure,  and  to  place 
himself  in  the  responsible  situation  of  its  principal  advocate. 
He  began  by  describing  what  he  considered  as  a  condition  of 
"  distress  "  throughout  the  country.  Characterizing  the  policy 
which  he  meant  to  recommend,  as  a  "  genuine  American 
system,"  he  described  those,  who  thought  a  foreign  market  an 
adequate  vent  for  the  surplus  products  of  our  labor,  as  "  parti 
sans  of  the  foreign  policy."  He  then  proceeded  to  enforce 
the  principle  of  protection  by  the  example  of  England,  the 
country  in  which  it  had  been  most  steadily  and  extensively 
maintained,  and  combated  the  objections  which  had  been 
made  to  its  introduction  here,  in  a  speech  of  astonishing  abil 
ity,  which  is  perhaps  the  most  perfect  summary  of  the  argu 
ments  in  its  favor  that  has  ever  been  placed  on  the  records 
of  our  legislation. 

Mr.  Webster  began  his  reply  to  Mr.  Clay,  by  stating  that 
he  represented  a  district  that  was  highly  commercial,  and 
deeply  interested  in  manufactures  also ;  and  that  such  were 
the  complex  and  conflicting  details  of  this  bill,  that  a  vote  in  its 
lfavor  would  support  measures  which  ought  not  to  be  adopted, 
,and  a  vote  against  it  would  oppose  measures,  some  of  which 


1824.]  TARIFF   OF   1824.  21 1 

might  be  correct.  He  did  not  approve  of  legislation  which,  for 
the  sake  of  inaugurating  a  new  system  that  was  to  give  a  great 
stimulus  to  manufactures,  dealt  in  this  manner  with  the  exist 
ing  pursuits  of  the  country.  But,  passing  to  the  general  policy 
of  this  measure,  he  took  occasion  very  distinctly  to  repel  the 
inference  that  might  be  drawn  from  the  application  made  by 
Mr.  Clay  of  the  terms  "  American  policy "  and  "  foreign 
policy,"  as  marking  an  invidious  distinction  between  those  who 
favored  and  those  who  opposed  this  bill.  A  policy,  he  said, 
which  America  never  had  tried,  which  was  admitted  to  be 
drawn  from  the  example  of  other  countries,  could  not  correctly, 
if  names  were  things,  be  described  as  an  American  policy ; 
while  that  which  we  had  hitherto  pursued,  and  which  foreign 
nations  had  not,  was  scarcely  to  be  designated  as  a  foreign  sys 
tem.  He  then  took  issue  with  Mr.  Clay  in  respect  to  the  state 
of  the  country,  which  he  regarded  as  one  of  depression  and 
not  distress,  denying  that  there  was  cause  for  so  gloomy  a 
representation  as  had  been  made.  He  traced  the  causes  of  the 
existing  depression,  and  argued  that  this  bill  was  not  calcu 
lated  to  reach  them.  It  was  necessary,  he  said,  to  know, 
when  new  applications  were  to  be  made  of  the  principles  of 
protection,  how  the  measure  was  to  operate  on  all  the  interests 
of  the  country ;  what  provisions  were  expected  to  have  the 
effect  of  increasing  the  home  market,  and  what  might  tend 
the  other  way.  On  these  points  he  had  derived  little  infor 
mation  from  the  advocates  of  the  measure.  But  he  could 
not,  he  said,  on  this  great  subject,  espouse  a  side  and  fight 
under  a  flag. 

Adverting  to  the  case  of  England,  he  contended  that  the 
policy  of  restraints  and  prohibitions  was  getting  out  of  repute 
as  the  true  nature  of  commerce  became  better  understood,  and 
he  established  this  position  by  numerous  citations  from  English 
statesmen  of  eminence,  who  were  even  then  beginning  to  ques 
tion  that  policy.  The  reason  why  exclusion,  prohibition,  and 
monopoly  were  now  suffered  to  remain  in  the  English  system, 
was,  he  observed,  because  a  thing  wrongly  done  cannot  always 
be  undone ;  and  for  the  same  reason  it  would  be  wise  in  us  to 
take  all  our  measures  of  this  kind  with  great  caution.  On  this 
subject  he  held  that  there  were  substantial  distinctions  which 


212  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  X. 

ought  to  be  observed.  One  is  the  distinction  between  entire 
prohibition  and  reasonable  encouragement.  It  is  one  thing,  by 
duties  on  foreign  articles,  to  awaken  a  home  competition  in  the 
production  of  the  same  articles ;  it  is  quite  another  thing  to 
remove  all  competition  by  the  total  exclusion  of  the  foreign 
article.  There  was  again  a  broad  distinction  between  affording 
reasonable  encouragement  to  manufactures  already  existing  in 
the  country,  and  by  total  prohibition  raising  up  manufactures 
not  suited  to  the  climate,  the  nature  of  the  country,  or  the  state 
of  the  population.  Although  it  might  not  always  be  easy  to 
apply  these  distinctions,  yet  they  were  sufficiently  clear  to 
indicate  the  true  course  of  policy. 

There  were,  continued  Mr.  Webster,  some  general  objections 
to  Mr.  Clay's  course  of  reasoning :  1.  He  seemed  to  treat  all 
domestic  industry  as  if  it  were  confined  to  the  production  of 
manufactured  articles.  It  was  an  error  to  attribute  to  certain 
employments  the  peculiar,  appellation  of  American  industry. 
If  one  man  makes  a  yard  of  cloth  at  home  and  another  raises 
agricultural  products  and  buys  a  yard  of  imported  cloth,  both 
are  the  earnings  of  domestic  industry ;  and  it  is  questionable 
how  far  it  is  proper  for  Government  to  decide  which  is  the  best 
mode  of  obtaining  the  article,  or  how  far  it  ought  to  be  left  to 
individual  discretion.  The  various  interests  and  pursuits  of 
society  should  be  allowed  to  flourish  and  grow  together.  They 
might  promote  manufactures  by  causing  sudden  transfers  of 
capital  and  violent  changes  in  men's  occupations,  if  they  chose 
to  disregard  the  effect  on  other  interests.  Without  exceeding 
the  bounds  of  moderation,  they  might  incidentally,  through  the 
revenue  power,  benefit  such  manufactures  as  could  be  most  use 
fully  promoted  at  home,  but  his  objection  was  to  the  immoder 
ate  use  of  the  power.  2.  Mr.  Clay  had  left  out  of  consideration 
what  had  already  been  done  for  manufactures.  The  real  aspect 
of  the  question  was,  in  regard  to  each  branch  of  manufactures 
affected  by  the  bill,  whether  enough  had  not  already  been  done, 
and  whether  more  could  now  be  done  without  great  injury  to 
other  interests.  In  illustration  of  this  view  of  the  subject,  he 
closed  with  an  elaborate  examination  of  the  existing  condition 
and  prospects  of  the  great  branches  of  manufacture,  and  the 
effect  of  the  bill  upon  the  navigating  and  agricultural  interests. 


1824.]  TARIFF   OF   1824.  213 

His  vote  was  given  against  the  bill,  which  had  a  majority  of 
five  only  in  its  favor.  In  the  Senate,  the  bill  was  materially 
modified  in  respect  to  many  of  its  details,  and,  when  the  House 
finally  concurred  in  these  changes,  many  of  Mr.  Webster's 
objections  were  obviated. 

From  this  analysis  it  will  be  seen  in  what  sense,  at  this 
time,  Mr.  Webster  was  a  "  free-trader  "  on  the  one  hand,  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  what  description  of  a  tariff  he  favored.  It  is  to 
be  remembered  that  this  speech  of  1824  was  made  in  answer  to 
an  argument  by  Mr.  Clay,  in  which  that  gentleman  had  pressed 
the  theory  of  protection  and  its  benefits  to  the  utmost  verge  of 
the  practice  of  England,  and  this,  too,  upon  a  bill  that  operated 
so  injuriously  upon  many  great  branches  of  industry,  that  it 
could  not  afterward  pass  the  Senate  unchanged.  Mr.  Webster 
was  obliged,  therefore,  to  present  the  argument  that  is  opposed 
to  an  extreme  application  of  the  principle  of  protection.  In 
theory  he  doubtless  concurred  with  the  general  sense  in  which 
the  current  of  the  age  was  then  beginning  to  flow,  in  favor  of 
freedom  of  commercial  intercourse  and  unrestrained  individual 
action,  as  the  best  condition  for  all  nations.  But  he  accepted 
the  fact  that  we  had  adopted  to  a  certain  extent  the  principle 
of  protection,  and  were  acting  upon  it ;  and,  therefore,  in  his 
view,  the  true  policy  of  all  our  legislation  on  this  subject  was 
to  adjust  the  revenue  in  reference  to  its  bearing  on  domestic 
industry,  so  as  neither  to  introduce  an  artificial  stimulus  of 
some  favored  pursuits  nor  to  cripple  others  which  were  left  to 
their  own  unaided  vigor.  As  a  statesman,  therefore,  in  a  gen 
eral  sense,  Mr.  Webster  inclined  to  the  doctrines  of  what  is 
called  "  free  trade ; "  as  an  American  legislator,  he  was  not  a 
"  free-trader  "  in  1824  or  at  any  other  period.  He  resisted  such 
an  application  and  extent  of  the  principles  of  protection  as  he 
thought  would  be  injurious ;  but  he  did  not  deny  the  necessity 
for  some  continued  exercise  of  that  principle,  nor  did  he  combat 
the  constitutional  power.1  Whatever  may  have  been  the  effect 

1  In  a  letter  from  Mr.  Gore,  addressed  mation,  with  true  principles  and  sound 

to  Mr.  Webster  at  this  time,  we  may  see  doctrines,   which,  if  acted   upon,  would 

how  his  views  on  the  subject  of  the  tariff  promote  the  individual  objects  exclusive- 

were  regarded  by  those  who  had  no  ex-  ly  intended  to  be  fostered,  at  the  same 

treme  opinions  on  either  side  :  "  I  thank  time  that  the  other  great  interests  of  the 

you  for  an  excellent   speech,  lately  re-  community  would  be  preserved.     No  one 

ceived,  on  the  tariff,  replete,  in  my  esti-  rejoices   more  sincerely  than   myself  at 


214  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  X. 

of  the  tariff  of  1824  on  the  pursuits  of  the  country,  or  on  the 
opinions  and  conduct  of  public  men,  Mr.  Webster  is  not  respon 
sible  for  it.1 

Mr.  Webster's  position  in  the  House,  as  chairman  of  the 
Judiciary  Committee,  brought  a  great  variety  of  subjects  under 
his  immediate  cognizance,  the  most  important  of  which  related 
to  certain  changes  then  agitated  in  respect  to  the  construction 
and  action  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  There 
were  causes  of  very  considerable  anxiety  to  the  friends  of  the 
Government,  springing  from  certain  dissatisfactions  with  the 
relations  of  that  tribunal  to  the  working  of  the  Constitution. 
The  number  of  the  judges  had  hitherto  been  seven ;  and  as 
their  discharge  of  the  circuit  duties,  as  well  as  of  the  duty  of 
sitting  in  bane,  had  long  been  a  part  of  the  judicial  system, 
and  as  the  growth  of  the  country  had  rendered  some  further 
provision  desirable,  the  question  had  arisen,  what  that  provision 
ought  to  be.  At  all  times  this  question  involves  an  enlarge 
ment  of  the  number  of  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court,  if  they 
are  to  retain  their  connection  with  the  circuits,  as  one  alterna 
tive,  or,  as  the  other,  the  preservation  of  a  smaller  number  of 
the  members  of  that  court,  and  the  creation  of  an  independent 
court,  or  the  appointment  of  special  judges  to  perform  the  cir 
cuit  duties.  The  disadvantage  of  a  numerous  bench  for  the 
purpose  of  sitting  as  a  court  of  errors  in  ~banc,  and  the  disad 
vantage  of  separating  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  from 
the  circuits,  in  order  to  limit  their  number,  rendered  this  a 
matter  of  great  perplexity.  These  difficulties  were  inherent 
in  the  subject ;  there  were  others,  which  were  perhaps  more 
formidable,  arising  from  the  state  of  men's  feelings  and  opin 
ions. 

The  function  of  declaring  void  and  inoperative  any  law  of  a 
State  that  conflicts  with  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
which  was  designed  by  that  Constitution  to  be  vested  in  the 

witnessing  your  advance   in  the  public  tion  to  which  Mr.  Webster  and  others 

mind.     There  is  hardly  cavil  and  carping  were  willing  to  assent  as  a  "judicious  " 

enough  to  relieve  you  from  the  denuncia-  tariff.     It  was  bitterly  ridiculed  by  Mr. 

tion  pronounced  against  him  of  whom  all  Clay,  who  declared  that,  if  the  bill  then 

speak  well." — (May  11,  1824.  Correspond-  before  the  House  did  not  pass,  no  other 

ence,  i.,  351.)  could  at  that  session,  or  probably  during 

1  There  was  a  phrase  current  at  that  that  Congress.    (See  Annals  of  Congress  ; 

time  which  described  the  kind  of  legisla-  Eighteenth  Congress,  1st  Session.) 


1824.]  JUDICIAL  SYSTEM.  215 

Supreme  Federal  Tribunal,  and  for  which  the  Judiciary  Act 
of  1789  had  provided  the  necessary  practical  means,  had,  pre 
vious  to  the  year  1824,  been  exercised  several  times  since  the 
origin  of  the  Government,  in  cases  where  the  law  of  a  State  had 
been  sustained  by  its  own  supreme  tribunal,  and  where  the 
appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  had  been  assumed  to  have  been  rightfully  given  by  the 
twenty-fifth  section  of  the  Federal  Judiciary  Act.1  This  ex 
ercise  of  appellate  jurisdiction  over  the  decisions  of  the  State 
courts,  in  this  class  of  cases,  had  given  no  special  dissatisfaction 
in  New  Jersey,  or  Maryland,  or  New  Hampshire,  the  States  in 
which  the  most  prominent  cases  of  its  application  had  arisen ; a 
but  when,  in  the  cases  of  Cohens  vs.  Virginia  and  Green  vs. 
Biddle,  coming  from  Virginia  and  Kentucky,  the  same  power 
had  been  successfully  invoked,  State  jealousy  and  pride  were 
touched  to  the  quick  in  two  of  their  principal  strongholds. 
The  dissatisfaction  culminated  at  this  session  of  Congress  in 
efforts  to  curtail  the  authority  and  limit  the  action  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States;  and  at  the  very  time 
when  these  efforts  were  made,  the  validity  of  the  steamboat 
monopoly  of  the  State  of  New  York  was  pending  before  that 
tribunal  in  the  case  of  Gibbons  vs.  Ogden. 

Mr.  Webster's  position,  therefore,  as  chairman  of  the  Judi 
ciary  Committee,  was  extremely  delicate  and  responsible.  He 
had  to  meet  propositions  looking  to  important  changes  in  the 
construction  of  the  Supreme  Court  and  the  functions  of  the 
judges,  and  other  propositions,  which  contemplated  the  ex 
tinction  or  the  restriction  of  its  appellate  jurisdiction  over  the 
State  courts.  With  respect  to  the  former,  he  entertained  then 
and  always  a  strong  opinion  that  the  separation  of  the  judges  of 
that  court  from  circuit  duties  is  entirely  inexpedient.  He  con 
sidered  that  the  best  mode  of  affording  the  relief  made  neces 
sary  by  the  pressure  of  business  upon  the  circuits,  was  to 
appoint  circuit  judges  where  that  pressure  was  greatest,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  have  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  per- 

1  The  section  which  declares  the  cases          2  New  Jersey  vs.   Wilson,   1   Cranch 

which  may  be  removed  from  State  courts  (from  New  Jersey) ;  McCulloch  vs.  Mary- 

to    the  Supreme   Court  of   the   United  land,  4  Wheaton  (from  Maryland) ;  Dart- 

States,  and  provides  for  the  mode  of  ef-  mouth  College  vs.  Woodward,  4  Wheaton 

fecting  it.  (from  New  Hampshire). 


216  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  X. 

form  some  nisiprius  duties.  But  there  was  no  general  concur 
rence  of  opinion  on  these  points  at  this  session,  and  he  could 
only  prevent  the  adoption  of  measures  which  he  thought  objec 
tionable.  On  the  other  branch  of  the  subject,  he  had  to  oppose, 
first,  a  proposed  repeal  of  the  twenty-fifth  section  of  the  Judi 
ciary  Act ;  and  next,  a  plan  requiring  the  concurrence  of  a 
certain  fixed  number  of  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  in 
any  decision  that  should  reverse  the  judgment  of  a  State 
court  on  the  ground  of  the  constitutional  invalidity  of  a 
State  law.  In  this  opposition  he  was  successful,  and  this 
class  of  cases  was  left  under  the  provisions  of  the  Judiciary 
Act  of  1T89. 

During  the  most  exciting  period  of  the  debate  of  1824, 
on  the  tariff,  and  while  Mr.  Webster  was  himself  speaking  in 
the  House  on  that  subject,  he  was  suddenly  called  upon  to 
prepare  for  the  argument  of  the  case  of  GMons  vs.  Ogden  in 
the  Supreme  Court,  involving  the  constitutional  validity  of  the 
laws  of  New  York,  which  had  granted  to  Fulton  and  Livings 
ton  the  exclusive  navigation  of  all  the  waters  within  the  ju 
risdiction  of  that  State,  by  vessels  impelled  by  steam,  for  a 
term  of  years  not  then  expired.  Every  tribunal  in  that  State 
to  which  the  question  had  been  submitted,  including  its 
"  Court  of  Errors  and  Appeals,"  had  affirmed  that  these  laws 
were  not  an  infraction  of  the  constitutional  jurisdiction  of  Con 
gress  to  regulate  commerce  between  the  States.  The  particu 
lar  injunction  issued  in  the  case,  at  the  instance  of  those  holding 
the  monopoly,  restrained  a  vessel  that  ran  between  the  city  of 
New  York  and  Elizabethtown,  in  New  Jersey.  Mr.  Webster 
had  not  been  employed  in  the  cause  in  the  State  courts ;  but,  on 
its  removal  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  he  was 
retained  in  it  to  argue  against  the  validity  of  the  New  York 
laws.  The  circumstances  attending  his  summons  into  court 
in  this  cause,  which  was  at  the  time  quite  unexpected,  are 
thus  detailed  by  Mr.  Ticknor  in  his  reminiscences  of  Mr. 
Webster : 

"  In  the  spring  of  1824,  Mr.  Webster  was  much  concerned  in  the  dis 
cussion  then  going  on  in  the  House  of  Representatives  at  Washington, 
upon  the  tariff.  One  morning  he  rose  very  early — earlier  even  than  was 
his  custom — to  prepare  himself  to  speak  upon  it.  From  long  before  day- 


1824.]  GIBBONS  VS.   OGDEN.  217 

light  till  the  hour  when  the  House  met,  he  was  busy  with  his  brief. 
When  he  was  far  advanced  in  speaking,  a  note  was  brought  to  him 
from  the  Supreme  Court,  informing  him  that  the  great  case  of  Gibbons  vs. 
Ogden  would  be  called  on  for  argument  the  next  morning.  He  was 
astounded  at  the  intelligence,  for  he  had  supposed  that  after  the  tariff 
question  should  have  been  disposed  of,  he  would  still  have  ten  days  to  pre 
pare  himself  for  this  formidable  conflict,  in  which  the  constitutionality  of 
the  laws  of  New  York,  granting  a  steamboat  monoply  of  its  tide-waters, 
would  be  decided.  He  brought  his  speech  on  the  tariff  to  a  conclusion  as 
speedily  as  he  could,  and  hurried  home  to  make  such  preparation  for  the 
great  law  argument  as  the  shortness  of  the  notice  would  permit.  He  had 
then  taken  no  food  since  his  morning's  breakfast — but  instead  of  dining 
he  took  a  moderate  dose  of  medicine  and  went  to  bed,  and  to  sleep. 
At  ten  p.  M.  he  awoke,  called  for  a  bowl  of  tea,  and  without  other  re 
freshment  went  immediately  to  work.  To  use  his  own  phrase,  '  the  tapes 
had  not  been  off  the  papers  for  more  than  a  year.'  He  worked  all  night, 
and,  as  he  has  told  me  more  than  once,  he  thought  he  never  on  any  occa 
sion  had  so  completely  the  free  use  of  all  his  faculties.  He  hardly  felt 
that  he  had  bodily  organs,  so  entirely  had  his  fasting  and  the  medicine 
done  their  work.  At  nine  A.  M.,  after  eleven  hours  of  continuous  intel 
lectual  effort,  his  brief  was  completed.  He  sent  for  the  barber  and  was 
shaved ;  he  took  a  very  slight  breakfast  of  tea  and  crackers ;  he  looked 
over  his  papers  to  see  that  they  were  all  in  order,  and  tied  them  up — he 
read  the  morning  journals,  to  amuse  and  change  his  thoughts,  and  then 
he  went  into  court,  and  made  that  grand  argument  which,  as  Judge  Wayne 
said  above  twenty  years  afterward,  '  released  every  creek  and  river,  every 
lake  and  harbor  in  our  country  from  the  interference  of  monopolies.' 
Whatever  he  may  have  thought  of  his  powers  on  the  preceding  night,  the 
court  and  the  bar  acknowledged  their  whole  force  that  day.  And  yet, 
at  the  end  of  five  hours,  when  he  ceased  speaking,  he  could  hardly  be  said 
to  have  taken  what  would  amount  to  half  the  refreshment  of  a  common 
meal,  for  above  two  and  thirty  hours,  and,  out  of  the  thirty-six  hours  im 
mediately  preceding,  he  had  for  thirty-one  been  in  a  state  of  very  high  in 
tellectual  excitement  and  activity." 

Probably,  if  we  possessed  as  full  a  report  of  this  argument 
as  that  which  remains  of  the  Dartmouth  College  case,  we 
should  be  inclined  to  estimate  it  quite  as  highly.  Certainly  the 
difficulties  to  be  overcome  were  as  great,  and  the  nature  of 
the  question  demanded  as  much  power  of  analysis  and  discrim 
ination,  and  force  of  reasoning,  as  were  required  in  the  former 
case.  The  weight  of  judicial  authority  that  was  arrayed 
against  the  side  which  Mr.  Webster  had  to  espouse  was  far 
more  imposing  than  in  the  college  case.  The  question  derived 


218  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  X. 

its  chief  difficulty  from  the  apparent  conflict  of  jurisdictions  as 
between  the  State  and  the  national  governments,  in  respect  to 
waters  which  are  confessedly  within  the  territorial  limits  of  a 
State.  But  notwithstanding  the  locality  in  which  these  laws  of 
monopoly  were  to  operate,  the  question  was,  whether  they  were 
consistent  with  the  grant  to  Congress  of  the  power  to  regu 
late  commerce  with  foreign  nations  and  between  the  several 
States.  The  argument  of  Mr.  Webster  established  the  great 
positions  that  the  commerce  of  the  Union  is  a  unit ;  that  its 
regulation  being  vested  in  Congress,  there  is  of  necessity  some 
legislative  regulation,  which  is  exclusively  in  Congress,  and  not 
concurrently  in  Congress  and  the  States  ;  and  that  a  law  grant 
ing  a  monopoly  of  navigation  over  waters  where  commerce  is 
carried  on,  is  a  law  regulating  commerce,  and  is  one  of  those 
regulations  that  can  be  made,  if  by  any  authority,  only  by 
the  authority  in  which  the  regulation  of  that  commerce  is 
vested. 

We  have  seen  that  Mr.  Webster  did  not  take  a  very  strong 
personal  interest  in  the  topic  that  absorbed  so  much  of  the 
attention  of  members  of  Congress  at  this  session — the  ap 
proaching  presidential  election.  On  his  arrival  at  Washington 
in  December,  1823,  he  found  the  state  of  things  to  be  this : 
The  candidates  were  Mr.  John  Quincy  Adams,  General  Jack 
son,  Mr.  Calhoun,  Mr.  Clay,  Mr.  Crawford,  and  Mr.  Clinton. 
Each  of  these  gentlemen  seemed  likely  to  command  so  many 
of  the  electoral  votes  as  to  prevent  a  choice  of  any  one  of  them. 
Mr.  Webster  was  satisfied,  therefore,  from  the  first,  that  the 
election  would  devolve  upon  the  House  of  Representatives.  He 
would  have  preferred  Mr.  Calhoun  at  this  time,  for  the  presi 
dency,  of  all  the  candidates,  if  there  had  been  a  reasonable 
prospect  that  he  could  be  elected.  As  the  winter  wore  on,  he 
saw  that  Mr.  Adams  and  General  Jackson  would  be  the  real 
competitors  at  last  ;  and  under  these  circumstances,  so  far  as 
he  gave  any  advice  to  his  friends  at  home,  it  was  to  cast  the 
electoral  votes  of  New  England  so  as  to  secure  the  election 
of  Mr.  Calhoun  as  Yice-President.  In  March  he  wrote  to  his 
brother,  who  had  much  influence  in  New  Hampshire  :  "  I  hope 
all  New  England  will  support  Mr.  Calhoun  for  the  vice-presi 
dency.  If  so,  he  will  probably  be  chosen,  and  that  will  be  a 


1824.]  END  OF  THE  SESSION.  219 

great  thing.  He  is  a  true  man,  and  will  do  good  to  the  coun 
try  in  that  situation." 

Mr.  Webster's  labors  of  this  session,  in  the  House,  in  its 
committees,  and  in  two  legal  tribunals,  had  their  effect  even 
upon  him,  accustomed  as  he  was  to  such  exertions,  and  strong 
as  was  his  physical  constitution  at  the  age  of  forty-two.  Prob 
ably  he  never  passed  a  winter  at  Washington  of  more  constant 
and  severe  exertion  than  this,  although  he  had  no  such  cause 
for  intense  anxiety  concerning  the  country  as  he  afterward 
had,  in  1830,  in  1842,  and  in  1850.  It  was  a  winter  of  hard 
work ;  and,  when  the  spring  arrived,  he  admitted  its  effects. 
"  We  have  had  a  busy  time  of  it,"  he  wrote  to  Judge  Story, 
"  since  you  left  us.  For  myself,  I  am  exhausted.  When  I 
look  in  the  glass,  I  think  of  our  old  New-England  saying, 
'as  thin  as  a  shad.'  I  have  not  vigor  enough  left,  either 
mental  or  physical,  to  try  an  action  for  assault  and  battery. 
However,  the  fine  weather  has  come  on,  I  have  resumed  the 
saddle,  and  hope  to  <  pick  up  my  crumbs'  again  soon."  To 
his  brother,  a  little  later,  he  writes :  "I  hope  to  get  away 
by  the  12th  of  May,  and  to  be  at  home  in  season  to  see 
you  at  Dorchester  the  week  before  the  General  Court  meets 
at  Concord.  The  ensuing  summer  I  shall  do  nothing  but 
move  about  and  play.  I  shall  certainly  spend  a  fortnight 
with  you  at  Boscawen,  and  the  rest  you  may  spend  with 
us.  August  we  will  pass  together  on  Cape  Cod.  My  wife 
wants  some  one  to  ride  about  with  her,  while  I  am  shoot 
ing,"  etc. 

But  it  was  past  the  middle  of  June  before  he  could  get 
away.  He  was  detained  for  some  days  after  the  termination 
of  the  session,  to  serve  on  a  committee  of  investigation  into 
certain  charges  made  by  a  Mr.  Nmian  Edwards  against  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Mr.  Crawford.  As  this  tedious 
business  dragged  its  slow  length  along,  he  began  to  think 
of  the  birds  that  he  ought  to  be  following  at  Cohasset  or 
Chelsea  Beach,  in  company  with  his  friend  Mr.  George  Blake. 
He  was  not  yet  so  reduced,  he  wrote,  but  that  he  "  could 
walk  with  a  bit  of  iron"  on  his  shoulder,  and  he  desired  to 
know  whether  Mr.  Blake  was  ever  found  driving  with  an 
"  umbrella  "  in  his  chaise,  as  that  quaint  and  most  agree- 


220  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  X. 

able  person  was  accustomed  to  call  his  fowling-piece  when 
in  its  case.1 

In  the  autumn  of  this  year  (1824),  he  was  again  elected 
a  Representative  in  Congress  from  the  Boston  district,  by  a 
vote  which  is  recorded  in  the  newspapers  of  the  time  as 
"  nearly  unanimous."  There  was  in  fact  no  opposition  of  any 
importance. 

Mr.  Webster  had  hitherto  possessed  no  permanent  coun 
try  residence,  excepting  his  father's  farm  in  ~New  Hamp 
shire,  which,  in  the  days  when  railways  were  as  yet  un 
known,  was  at  a  rather  inconvenient  distance  from  Boston. 
In  fact,  he  did  not  become  the  sole  owner  of  this  property 
until  some  years  after  this  period,  although  he  frequently 
went  there.  It  was  a  place  always  full  of  tender  recollec 
tions  for  him.  But  the  farm  was  a  small  one,  the  rural 
resources  were  few ;  and,  above  all,  it  was  remote  from 
the  sea,  which  always  had  for  him  very  great  attractions. 
"  At  Franklin,"  he  used  to  say,  "  I  can  see  all  in  two 
days." 

It  was  in  the  autumn  of  this  year  (1824)  that  he  first 
saw  the  spot  on  the  southeastern  shore  of  Massachusetts 
which  afterward  became  his  favorite  home,  and  with  which 
his  name  will  be  long  associated  ;  where,  as  he  often  said, 
he  "  could  go  out  every  day  in  the  year  and  see  something 
new."  This  house,  situated  about  a  mile  from  the  ocean 
(which  is  in  full  view  from  it),  and  surrounded  by  a  farm 
then  embracing  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres,  was  the  prop 
erty  of  Captain  Jdhn  Thomas.  The  month  of  August  was 
passed  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Webster  and  their  children  at  Sand 
wich.  On  their  way  to  Boston  —  Mr.  Webster  driving  his 

1  The  Hon.  George  Blake,  a  leading  library  and  papers.     Mr.  Webster  used 

member  of  the   Boston  bar,  for    many  to  say,  that  ever  afterward,  whenever 

years  United  States  District  Attorney  for  Mr.  Blake  had  a  cause  to  try,  which  he 

Massachusetts,  was  one  of  Mr.  Webster's  did  not  wish  to  try,  whatever  was  the 

most  intimate   friends,  and  a  frequent  date  of  its  inception,  he  invariably  began 

companion  of  his  field-sports.     He  was  a  dilatory  motion  with  the  words — "  May 

a  gentleman  of  many  oddities,  of  excel-  it  please  your  honors,  the  disastrous  and 

lent  company,  not  specially  diligent  in  ever-lamented  fire  in  Court  Street,  which 

his   profession,   and   not   always   "  pre-  consumed  every  one  of  my  papers  in  this 

pared "  for  the  trial  of  his  causes.      In  cause,  makes   it   necessary  for    me    to 

the  year  182-,  the  office  which  he  occupied  throw  myself  upon  the  indulgence  of  the 

in  Boston  was  burned,  and  he  lost  his  court,"  etc. 


1824.] 


VISIT   TO   THE   THOMAS  FARM. 


wife  in  a  New-England  "  chaise " — they  chanced  to  take  the 
road  which  passed  by  the  Thomas  farm.  As  they  descended 
the  valley,  Mrs.  Webster  was  so  much  delighted  by  the  quiet 
repose  of  this  old  house  under  its  magnificent  elm,  and  by  the 
general  beauty  of  the  scene,  that  she  begged  her  husband  to 
turn  in  at  the  gate  and  pay  a  visit  to  the  family.  The  call 
ended  in  their  being  invited  to  extend  their  visit  to  a  few 
days  ;  and,  before  they  left,  an  arrangement  was  made,  by 
which  they  became,  in  succeeding  summers,  regular  inmates 
in  the  family  of  Captain  Thomas.  This  continued  to  be  their 
course  of  life  for  several  years. 


GREEN  HARBO3— THE  THOMAS  ESTATE  AT  MARSHFIELD. 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 


CHAPTEE   XI. 
1824-1825. 

VISIT   TO   ME.    JEFFERSON    AND     ME.    MADISON DEATH    OF   HIS     SON 

.CHAELES ELECTION   OF   ME.    JOHN     QUINCY     ADAMS     AS     PEESI- 

DENT INTEENAL    IMPEOVEMENTS CEIMES     ACT     OF    1825 COB- 

EESPONDENCE   WITH   J.    EVELYN   DENISON,    ESQ. FIEST   BUNKEE 

HILL    OEATION JOUENEY   TO   NIAGARA. 

A  FTER  passing  the  summer  of  1824  in  the  relaxation  which 
-£A_  he  had  promised  himself,  it  was  arranged  in  the  autumn 
that  Mr.  Webster  should  make  a  visit  to  Mr.  Jefferson  at  Monti- 
cello,  in  company  with  Mr.  Ticknor,  who  had  been  invited  by 
Mr.  Jefferson  to  assist  him  in  regulating  the  course  of  studies 
at  the  University  of  Virginia.  Mr.  Ticknor  has  furnished  me 
with  the  following  account  of  their  journey,  and  the  incidents 
of  their  visit  to  Mr.  Jefferson  and  Mr.  Madison : 

"  Early  in  the  autumn  of  1824, 1  was  one  day  dining  with  Mr.  Webster 
at  his  own  house,  and  talked  about  passing  some  time  in  Washington  the 
next  winter,  as  I  had  often  done  before.  I  told  him  that  Mr.  Jefferson  had 
invited  me  to  meet  General  Lafayette  at  Monticello,  but  that  I  did  not 
think  I  should  be  able  to  do  it.  I  thought,  however,  that,  in  the  event  of 
my  going  to  Washington,  I  should  endeavor,  as  Mrs.  Ticknor  would  be 
with  me,  to  take  her  to  Mr.  Jefferson's.  He  said  he  should  like  to  be  of 
the  party.  I  replied  that  if  he  were  in  earnest,  and  could  afford  the  time 
for  it,  I  could  easily  arrange  matters  so  that  it  would  be  agreeable  for  him 
to  go.  He  held  out  his  hand  and  said,  '  It  is  a  bargain,  if  you  say  so.' 

"  In  consequence  of  this  conversation,  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Jefferson,  inti 
mating  to  him  that  Mr.  Webster  might  visit  Virginia  with  us.  He  answered 
immediately,  under  date  of  November  8th :  *  Whether  Mr.  Webster  comes 


1824.]  VISIT  TO  JEFFERSON.  223 

with  you,  or  alone  as  suits  himself,  he  will  be  a  welcome  guest.  His  char 
acter,  his  talents  and  principles,  entitle  him  to  the  favor  and  respect  of  all 
his  fellow-citizens,  and  have  long  ago  possessed  him  of  mine.' 

"We  left  Washington  on  the  9th  day  of  December,  and  went  by 
steamboat  to  Fredericksburg  Landing.  At  Fredericksburg,  a  friend  had 
made  all  the  arrangements  necessary  for  the  journey,  and  we  set  off  the 
next  morning  in  a  carriage  and  four  horses  and  a  gig,  all  very  slovenly, 
after  the  Virginia  fashion.  The  roads  were  very  bad.  The  landlord  of 
the  house  where  we  dined  dropped  his  knife  and  fork  with  astonishment, 
as  he  was  carving  a  very  nice  turkey,  when  he  understood  that  he  was 
talking  with  Mr.  Webster  of  Massachusetts ;  but  he  was  nothing  daunted, 
and  they  had  a  great  argument  upon  the  question  of  internal  improve 
ment,  the  Virginian  confessing  that  if  the  power  were  not  in  the  Constitu 
tion,  he  wished  it  was.  We  were  to  pass  the  night  at  a  tavern  kept  by  a 
Dr.  Tyrrel,  but  the  days  were  short  and  the  roads  detestable,  and  it  was 
long  after  dark  before  we  reached  our  destination.  Mr.  Webster  was  very 
amusing,  telling  stories  to  keep  our  spirits  up,  singing  scraps  of  old  songs, 
and  making  merry  like  a  boy.  Our  accommodations  for  the  night  were 
bad  enough,  but  before  we  went  to  bed  we  prepared  a  note  for  Mr.  Mad 
ison,  which  was  to  be  dispatched  the  next  morning  at  daylight,  and  in 
formed  him  of  our  intended  visit,  for  which  President  Monroe  had  pre 
pared  him.  At  Orange  Court-House,  five  miles  from  Dr.  Tyrrel's,  we  met 
our  messenger,  who  brought  us  a  kind  welcome  from  Mr.  Madison,  and 
who  was  accompanied  by  Mr.  Madison's  coachman,  whom  he  had  sent  to 
show  us  the  way — a  needful  providence,  where  proper  roads  were  none 
and  landmarks  very  few. 

"We  were  very  hospitably  received.  Mr.  Madison  and  Mr.  Webster 
were  old  acquaintances,  and  evidently  well  pleased  to  see  each  other  again. 
Mr.  Madison  talked  well,  and  laid  himself  out  to  be  agreeable  to  Mr.  Web 
ster.  After  a  long  and  pleasant  dinner,  as  we  were  going  back  to  the 
saloon,  Mr.  Webster  said  to  me,  in  an  undertone,  '•Stare  hie;'1  for  he  was 
afraid  I  might  say  something  of  going  away  the  next  day ;  but  I  had  no 
such  intention.  We  did  not  talk  that  evening  very  late,  for  we  were  tired, 
and  late  hours  were  evidently  not  the  habit  of  the  family.  The  next 
morning  (Sunday),  after  breakfast,  Mr.  Webster  and  I,  accompanied  by  Mr. 
Todd,1  took  a  ride  on  horseback  of  eight  or  ten  miles.  When  we  had 
passed  beyond  the  limits  of  Mr.  Madison's  domain,  the  country  looked 
pretty  cheerless.  We  rode  through  woods  and  across  fields,  Mr.  Webster 
making  himself  merry  as  he  had  the  day  before  with  wondering  where 
'  Phil  Barbour's  constituents  could  be,'  for  this  was  Mr.  Philip  Barbour's 
district.  Before  we  returned,  however,  we  made  a  visit  to  Mrs.  Barbour, 
to  whom  Mr.  Webster  gave  an  account  of  her  husband,  whom  he  had  left 
in  Washington,  which  visibly  interested  her.  The  dinner  that  day  was  as 
agreeable  as  the  one  the  day  before.  Mr.  Madison  told  many  stories  with 

1  Son  of  Mrs.  Madison,  by  a  former  husband. 


224  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XI. 

much  grace  and  effect.  Mr.  Webster  was  much  interested  in  them,  espe 
cially  in  those  that  had  a  political  cast ;  for,  though  every  thing  of  a  party 
nature  was  avoided  between  persons  whose  opinions  were  so  opposite,  yet 
both  were  too  much  interested  in  the  country  and  its  history  not  to  talk 
about  its  affairs.  After  we  returned  to  Washington,  Mr.  Webster  told  me 
that  he  had  been  very  much  impressed  by  Mr.  Madison's  conversation,  and 
that  it  had  fully  confirmed  him  in  an  opinion  he  had  for  some  time  enter 
tained,  that  Mr.  Madison  was  '  the  wisest  of  our  Presidents,  except  Wash 
ington.' 

"  We  spent  two  days  at  Mr.  Madison's,  and  then  went  to  Mr.  Jefferson's, 
which,  though  only  thirty-two  miles  off,  proved  a  journey  of  more  than 
one  day.  At  Charlottesville,  before  we  went  up  to  Monticello,  Mr.  Web 
ster  received  a  letter  which  changed  his  appearance  and  manner  the 
moment  he  had  read  it.  It  was  from  Mrs.  Webster,  and  gave  him  bad 
news  of  his  youngest  child,  little  Charles,  who  was  thought  ill,  but  not 
dangerously  so.  The  change  was  the  more  apparent  from  his  having  pre 
viously  been  so  gay.  Only  the  evening  before,  at  Mrs.  Clarke's  tavern,  he 
had  said,  *  that  without  intending  any  compliment  to  his  companions,  he 
would  say  that  he  had  not  felt  so  free  from  care  and  anxious  thought,  as 
he  did  then,  for  five  years.'  (I  find  this  in  a  memorandum  made  at  the 
time.) 

"  We  remained  at  Monticello  four  or  five  days,  detained  one  day  beyond 
our  purpose  by  rains  and  the  consequent  swelling  of  the  streams,  which 
made  travelling  difficult  in  a  country  where  bridges  are  rare.  Mr.  Jeffer 
son  had  regular  habits  and  fixed  hours  for  every  thing  ;  but  he  was 
very  attentive  to  Mr.  Webster,  and  plainly  liked  to  talk  with  him.  Mr. 
Webster,  on  his  part,  was  very  respectful  to  Mr.  Jefferson,  and  led  him 
constantly  to  converse  upon  the  doings  of  the  old  Congress  and  the 
period  of  the  Revolution,  on  both  which  topics  Mr.  Jefferson  was  inter 
esting  and  instructive.  Mr.  Webster  enjoyed  these  conversations  very 
much,  and  spoke  of  them  afterward  with  great  satisfaction. 

"  One  day,  after  dinner,  Mr.  Webster  told  a  story  of  himself,  which  was 
characteristic  of  him,  and  amused  Mr.  Jefferson  very  much.  Mr.  Jefferson 
remarked  that  '  men  not  unfrequently  obtained  more  credit  for  readiness 
in  command  of  their  knowledge,  and  indeed  for  its  amount,  than  they 
deserved.'  He  said  it  had  happened  to  himself.  Mr.  Webster  replied  that 
he  supposed  it  had  happened  to  most  men,  and  especially  to  lawyers.  He 
said  that,  soon  after  going  to  Portsmouth  as  a  young  lawyer,  a  blacksmith 
brought  him  a  case  under  a  will ;  he  was  unable  to  give  him  a  decided 
answer,  and  desired  him  to  call  again.  Having  little  to  do,  he  went  to 
work  upon  the  case,  and  found  it  a  difficult  one.  He  went  through  all  the 
books  in  his  own  little  collection,  that  could  give  him  any  light,  and  then 
borrowed  what  he  could  find  relating  to  the  point  in  question,  in  the 
libraries  of  Mr.  Jeremiah  Mason,  and  of  Mr.  Peyton  R.  Freeman,  a  curious 
black-letter  lawyer  in  Portsmouth.  His  client  called  for  an  opinion,  but 


1824.]  VISIT  TO  JEFFERSON.  225 

he  was  unable  to  give  him  one — he  had  only  got  far  enough  into  the  mat 
ter  to  ascertain  that  the  blacksmith's  bequest  was  either  a  contingent  re 
mainder  or  an  executory  devise.  He  sent  to  Boston  and  bought  Fearne's 
Essay  on  these  two  subjects,  and  other  books,  all  together  costing  him  fifty 
dollars.  At  last,  after  a  month's  hard  work,  and  making  out  a  very  elab 
orate  brief,  he  gave  an  opinion  favorable  to  his  client's  claim,  argued  the 
case,  won  it,  and  received  a  fee  of  fifteen  dollars ;  all  that  the  amount  in 
controversy  would  warrant  him  to  charge. 

"  Years  passed  by,  and  the  blacksmith  and  his  case  had  almost  passed 
away  also  from  his  memory.  At  length,  being  in  New  York  on  his  way  to 
Washington,  Mr.  Aaron  Burr  sent  him  a  note,  saying  that  he  wished  to 
consult  him  on  a  legal  question  of  some  consequence.  Mr.  Webster  gave 
him  an  appointment,  and,  when  Mr.  Burr  began  to  explain  his  case  to  him, 
he  said  that  he  knew  in  a  moment  that  it  was  his  blacksmith's  case  over 
again.  He,  however,  heard  Mr.  Burr  quietly  through,  and  then,  with  the 
blacksmith's  brief  full  in  his  mind,  began  to  reply.  He  cited  a  series  of 
cases  bearing  on  the  point,  and  going  back,  if  I  remember  rightly,  to  a 
leading  one  in  the  time  of  Charles  II.  Mr.  Burr  listened  to  him  for  some 
time,  and  then  interrupted  him  somewhat  suddenly,  by  asking  him  whether 
he  had  been  consulted  in  that  case  before.  '  He  evidently  suspected,'  said 
Mr.  Webster,  '  that  I  must  have  been  of  counsel  to  the  other  side.  I  as 
sured  him  that  I  did  not  know  there  was  such  a  case  or  such  parties  in  the 
world  till  he  explained  it  to  me.'  Mr.  Webster  said  that  he  subsequently 
gave  Mr.  Burr  a  written  opinion  on  his  case,  and  made  him  pay  enough 
for  it  to  cover  all  his  work  for  the  blacksmith  and  something  moreover 
for  Mr.  Burr's  suspicion  that  he  had  been  of  counsel  for  the  opposite  party. 
He  added,  '  Mr.  Burr,  no  doubt,  thought  me  a  much  more  learned  lawyer 
than  I  was,  and,  under  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  I  did  not  think  it 
worth  while  to  disabuse  him  of  his  good  opinion  of  me.' 

"  Mr.  Jefferson,  though  then  eighty-one  years  old,  rode  constantly  on 
horseback  in  fine  weather.  One  day  we  rode  with  him  to  Charlottesville, 
about  four  miles,  to  visit  the  buildings  for  his  university,  which  had  not 
yet  gone  into  operation,  but  was  soon  to  be  opened.  It  was  the  last  great 
interest  of  his  life,  and  Mr.  Webster  took  much  pleasure  in  witnessing  the 
beginning  of  the  enterprise.  He  did  not,  however,  fail  to  discover  some  of 
the  defects  of  the  system  ;  he  especially  suggested  to  Mr.  Jefferson  that  a 
project  he  had  introduced  into  his  laws  for  the  university,  to  train  the 
scholars  in  military  exercises  with  guns  made  wholly  of  wood,  because  he 
did  not  think  it  safe  to  trust  them  with  the  usual  fire-arms,  would  fail  from 
the  ridicule  of  the  young  men.  It  proved  so. 

"  Mr.  Webster  was  impatient  of  our  detention  by  the  weather.  He  was 
very  anxious  to  get  news  of  his  sick  child,  and  could  not  hope  for  any 
letters  till  he  should  reach  Washington.  He  wanted  also  to  know  what 
was  going  on  in  Congress ;  but  Mr.  Jefferson  took  no  newspaper  but  the 
Richmond  Enquirer.  With  the  first  fine  weather,  therefore,  we  descended 
16 


226  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XI. 

the  mountain.  Several  of  the  young  gentlemen  of  the  family  accompanied 
us.  On  the  banks  of  the  Rivanna  we  found  many  wagons  waiting  to 
be  ferried  over ;  the  stream  was  much  swollen,  and  the  passage  difficult. 
Many  had  their  turn  before  us,  and,  among  the  rest,  a  drove  of  pigs  from 
Kentucky.  The  ferryman  had  but  one  person  to  assist  him — an  inefficient 
slave — they  were  both  much  exhausted,  having  been  at  work  since  day 
break.  While  we  were  crossing,  Mr.  Webster,  in  his  usual  cheerful  man 
ner,  began  to  talk  to  the  ferryman,  who  found  it  very  difficult  to  stem  the 
sudden  turbulence  of  the  stream.  '  You  find  it  hard  work  enough  this 
morning,  I  think,'  said  Mr.  Webster.  '  Yes,  sir,'  said  the  boatman,  '  it  puts 
a  man  up  to  all  he  knows,  I  assure  you.'  An  apt  phrase,  which  amused 
Mr.  Webster  very  much  at  the  time,  which  he  was  constantly  using  on  all 
occasions  through  the  rest  of  the  journey,  and  which  he  often  introduced 
in  speaking  and  writing  in  after-years.  In  this  way  it  has  become  a  com 
mon  phrase  in  our  part  of  the  country,  where  few  persons  know  its  origin. 
"  Of  the  rest  of  our  journey  back  to  Washington  I  remember  nothing 
but  that  it  was  uncomfortable  from  the  season  of  the  year,  and  that  Mr. 
Webster  was  depressed  and  anxious  from  the  news  he  had  received  from 
home,  and  from  what  he  feared  he  should  receive." 

To  this  account,  which  was  written  by  Mr.  Ticlmor  since 
Mr.  "Webster's  death,  I  have  to  add  a  memorandum  of  Mr.  Jef 
ferson's  conversation,  that  was  prepared  by  both  these  gentle 
men  at  the  time  of  their  visit,  and  which  remained  private  until 
it  was  included  in  the  first  volume  of  Mr.  "Webster's  correspond 
ence,  published  by  Mr.  Fletcher  Webster  in  1857".  It  was  dic 
tated  partly  by  Mr.  Webster  and  partly  by  Mr.  Ticknor  at  the  inn 
where  they  passed  the  first  night  after  leaving  Mr.  Jefferson's, 
Mrs.  Ticknor  acting  as  amanuensis,  and  adding  her  recollections 
of  Mr.  Jefferson's  conversation  to  those  of  the  gentlemen.1  This 
paper  will  be  found  in  the  appendix  to  the  present  volume.2 

1  I  mention  these  facts,  because  the  interesting  visit ;  although  it  was  doubt- 
biographer  of  Mr.  Jefferson  has  doubted  less  supposed  that  the  time  might  arrive 
the  accuracy  of  Mr.  Webster's  account  when  this  account  of  their  illustrious 
of  some  of  Mr.  Jefferson's  remarks,  espe-  host,  as  he  appeared  in  the  last  year  of 
cially  those  relating  to  Mr.  Wirt's  Life  of  his  life,  could  with  propriety  be  given  to 
Patrick  Henry.  The  facts  are,  that  what  the  world.  Thirty-two  years  after  the 
was  published  in  1857,  in  Mr.  Webster's  death  of  Mr.  Jefferson,  and  five  years 
correspondence  as  a  "  Memorandum  of  after  the  death  of  Mr.  Webster,  this 
Mr.  Jefferson's  Conversation,"  was  a  very  paper  was  first  published.  I  may  be 
carefully-prepared  paper,  the  result  of  the  permitted  to  add,  what  will  be  con- 
recollections  of  three  persons,  who  as-  firmed  by  all  who  have  known  them, 
sisted  and  corrected  each  other,  and  who  that,  in  strength  and  accuracy  of  mem- 
composed  the  account  immediately  after  ory  there  have  been  few  men  who  ex- 
leaving  Mr.  Jefferson's  house.  It  was  celled  the  two  gentlemen  who  prepared 
originally  prepared  for  the  purpose  of  this  memorandum, 
preserving  a  private  record  of  this  most  2  Post,  p.  et  seq. 


1824.]  RETURN  FROM  MR.  JEFFERSON'S.  227 

After  the  return  of  the  party  from  Mr.  Jefferson's,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Ticknor  left  Mr.  Webster  in  Washington,  and  went  to 
Baltimore  to  pass  a  short  time.  The  following  letter  was  the 
first  they  received  from  him  : 

[MR.  WEBSTER  TO  MR.  TICKNOR.] 

"WASHINGTON,  Sunday  Evening. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  send  you  three  letters,  which  have  been  put  into 
my  hands  for  that  purpose  to-day. 

"I find  that  you  are  really  gone;  and  if  I  could  tell  you  how  sorry  I 
am,  I  would.  I  passed  the  house  yesterday,  and  gave  a  look  to  the  win 
dows,  but  saw  no  inviting  faces.  To-day  I  have  been  at  home,  except  an 
hour  passed  with  Mr.  Tazewell.  The  general 1  has  been  to  see  me,  and  we 
have  had  a  good  long  talk.  I  believe  he  hopes  to  catch  a  sight  of  your 
party  at  Baltimore. 

"  If  my  constituents  accuse  me  of  negligence  and  inattention  this  ses 
sion,  I  shall  lay  it  all  off  on  Mrs.  Ticknor.  She  had  no  right,  I  shall  say, 
to  be  so  agreeable  as  to  draw  my  attention  from  the  weighty  affairs  of  state 
while  she  was  here,  and  to  create  depression,  or  a  kind  of  I-am-not-quite- 
ready-to-go-to-work  feeling  by  her  departure.  "What  will  State  Street  say 
to  it,  think  you,  if  its  affairs  should  be  neglected,  although  Shakespeare  be 
ever  so  well  read,  or  all  the  versions  of  Sir  John  Moore's  burial  revised  and 
corrected  ? 

"  Please  to  assure  her  that  I  shall  put  it  to  her  account,  if  there  should 
happen  any  dissatisfactions  or  disaffections  hereafter — any  mutterings  of 
the  '  vital  commoners,'  or '  petty  inland  spirits.'  To-morrow,  we  shall  have 
Niagara — Chesapeake  Canal — Cumberland  Koad — and,  in  the  Senate,  a 
discussion  on  piracy. 

"  I  have  no  news  from  Boston.  Our  mail  is  '  due  and  unpaid.'  Send 
back  Wallenstein.3  I  shall  be  happy  to  see  him  on  two  accounts  :  first,  on 
account  of  himself ;  second,  that  I  may  see  whether  any  of  your  visages  are 
reflected  from  his  face. 

"  I  am  shocked  with  the  news  of  Mr.  Harper's  death.  It  is  a  public 
loss.  He  was  a  man  of  excellent  feelings  and  much  cultivation.  His  mind 
was  rather  comprehensive  than  profound,  and  his  general  power  persuasion 
rather  than  logic.  He  wrote  with  much  more  of  purity  and  of  elegance 
than  most  of  his  contemporaries.  His  heart  was  true  and  kind  in  all  cases, 
and  I  believe  no  man  more  loved  or  cherished  his  friends. 

"  I  hope  to  hear  from  you  by  to-morrow's  mail.  Give  my  remembrances, 
regrets,  good  wishes,  and  whatever  else  is  proper,  to  Mrs.  Ticknor  and  Miss 

1  General  Lafayette.  the  service  of  the  Russian  government. 

2  Julius  von  Wallenstein,  for  several  Mr.  Ticknor  first  knew  him  in  Madrid  in 
years  an  attache  to  the  Russian  legation  1818,  where  he  held  a  position  corre- 
in  Washington ;   a  man  of   talent,  and  spending  to  that  which  he  held  in  this 
various  but  irregular  culture.     He  was  a  country.     He  was  a  good  deal  in  Mr. 
German  by  birth,  but  had  long  been  in  Webster's  society. 


228  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

Gardiner — and  to  Mr.  Wallenstein  if  he  be  yet  with  you— but  again  I  say, 
send  him  back  as  soon  as  you  can  spare  him. 

"  I  am,  my  dear  sir,  most  truly  yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTEK." 

[MB.  TICKNOB  TO  MB.  WEBSTEB.] 

"  BALTIMORE,  Tuesday  Evening. 

"  MY  DEAB  SIB  :  Your  kind  note  of  Sunday  evening,  by  the  unkind- 
ness  of  the  Baltimore  post-office,  was  put  among  the  F's,  and  therefore 
did  not  reach  its  destination  until  this  morning,  though  it  was  due,  and 
arrived  yesterday.  Wallenstein,  hovever,  who  went  back  in  the  coach, 
carried  you  a  little  note,  which  I  trust  you  received  early  in  the  forenoon  ; 
and  which  will,  at  least,  serve  to  assure  you  that  we  are  not  insensible  to 
the  kindness  you  have  expressed  for  us  during  the  last  week.  .  .  .  General 
Harper's  death  has  cast  a  gloom  over  this  city,  as  such  a  great  loss  ought 
to.  Wallenstein  will  have  given  you  all  the  details.  Old  Mr.  Carroll 
fainted  when  he  heard  of  it ;  but  is  gradually  recovering.  We  have  seen 
Count  Menou  *  several  times,  who  is  staying  at  old  Mr.  Carroll's  to  comfort 
him ;  and  his  feelings,  on  the  loss  of  General  Harper,  who  was  once  a  great 
benefactor  to  him,  do  him  great  credit  as  a  good  man.  .  .  .  Savage  says 
there  is  no  excitement  in  Boston  about  the  presidential  election.  Do  let 
us  hear  from  you  as  often  as  possible,  if  it  be  but  a  line,  written  in  your 
place  while  some  Ohio  member  is  prosing ;  it  will  console  us,  for  we  have 
indeed  a  heavy  miss  of  you.  GEO.  TICKNOB." 

The  child,  whose  illness  cast  the  coming  shadows  of  grief 
over  Mr.  Webster's  enjoyment  of  his  tour  in  Virginia,  was  born 
in  Boston,  on  the  31st  December,  1822.  He  died  on  the  18th 
of  December,  1824.  He  was  the  youngest  of  Mr.  "Webster's 
children ;  loved  with  all  the  strength  of  the  great  heart  of  his 
father,  and  all  the  affection  of  the  devoted  mother.2  The  fol 
lowing  letter,  from  Mrs.  Webster  to  her  husband,  succeeded  the 
first  announcement  of  their  loss  : 

[MBS.  WEBSTEB   TO   MB.  WEBSTEB. 

"  BOSTON,  December  28, 1824. 

"  I  have  a  great  desire  to  write  to  you,  my  beloved  husband,  but  I 
doubt  if  I  can  write  legibly,  as  I  can  hold  my  pen  but  in  my  fingers.3  I 

1  Count  Menou  was  long  a  refugee  hardly  impaired  the  fresh  beauty  of  his 
French  resident  in  Baltimore,  and  sub-  countenance ;  but  shortly  after  his  death, 
sequently  French  minister  in  Washing-  when  the  round  contour  of  his  cheeks 
ton.  had  a  little  fallen  away,  his  face  and  head 

2  This  child  is  said  to  have  borne  a  were  like  a  perfect  miniature  cast  of  his 
stronger  likeness  to  Mr.  Webster  than  father.    No  marble  bust  can  ever  present 
either  of  his  other  sons.     Mrs.  Lee  says  a  more  perfect  likeness  of  his   noble 
of  him :  "  This  lovely  child  indicated  sin-  father."— (  Correspondence,  i.) 

gular  attractiveness  of  mind  and  charac-          3  In  consequence  of  an  injury  to  the 
ter.      His  illness  was   short,  and    had    thumb  of  her  right  hand. 


1824.]  DEATH  OF  LITTLE  CHARLES.  229 

have  just  received  your  letter,  in  answer  to  William's,1  which  told  you  that 
little  Charley  was  no  more.  I  have  dreaded  the  hour  which  should  de 
stroy  your  hopes,  but  trust  you  will  not  let  this  event  afflict  you  too  much, 
and  that  we  both  shall  be  able  to  resign  him  without  a  murmur,  happy  in 
the  reflection  that  he  has  returned  to  his  Heavenly  Father  pure  as  I 
received  him.  It  was  an  inexpressible  consolation  to  me,  when  I  con 
templated  him  in  his  sickness,  that  he  had  not  one  regret  for  the  past, 
nor  one  dread  for  the  future ;  he  was  patient  as  a  lamb  during  all  his 
sufferings ;  and,  they  were  at  last  so  great,  I  was  happy  when  they  were 
ended. 

"  I  shall  always  reflect  on  his  brief  life  with  mournful  pleasure,  and,  I 
hope,  remember  with  gratitude  all  the  joy  he  gave  me ;  and  it  has  been 
great.  And,  oh,  how  fondly  did  I  flatter  myself  it  would  be  lasting  ! 

'  It  was  but  yesterday,  ray  child,  thy  little  heart  beat  high ; 
And  I  had  scorned  the  warning  voice  that  told  me  thou  must  die.1 

"  Dear  little  Charles !  He  sleeps  alone  under  St.  Paul's.  I  cannot  ex 
press  how  much  I  regret  that  it  did  not  occur  to  any  one  of  us  to  have  the 
dear  remains  of  Grace  removed.  I  thought  much  of  it  when  the  tomb  of 
Mr.  Sullivan  was  opened  for  Mrs.  Sullivan's  little  boy.  I  regretted  you 
were  not  here  to  consult  upon  the  subject.  Oh !  do  not,  my  dear  husband, 
talk  of  your  own  '  final  abode ; '  that  is  a  subject  I  never  can  dwell  on  for 
a  moment.  "With  you  here,  my  dear,  I  can  never  be  desolate.  Oh,  may 
Heaven,  in  its  mercy,  long  preserve  you  !  And  that  we  may  ever  wisely 
improve  every  event,  and  yet  rejoice  together  in  this  life,  prays  your  ever 
affectionate  G.  W. 

"I  ought  to  mention  William's  unwearied  attention  and  kindness  to 
dear  little  Charles.  His  grief  is  great  at  the  loss.  Poor  Nancy  came  last 
Friday ;  she  is  much  afflicted  that  she  did  not  come  in  time  to  see  the 
dear  little  boy  once  more.  She  begs  you  to  accept  her  sympathy  and 
love." 

So  far  as  I  know,  this  was  the  last  occasion  on  which  Mr. 
Webster's  emotions  found  relief  in  his  own  verse.  It  is 
needless  for  me  to  repeat  that,  even  in  private,  he  made 
no  pretensions  to  be  a  writer  of  poetry.  Yet,  among  all 
the  productions  in  which  the  idea  of  the  earlier  immortality 
of  a  child  has  been  mingled  with  parental  grief,  I  have  seen 
few  that  are  more  touching  than  some  of  the  stanzas  which 
he  sent  to  his  wife  after  he  had  learned  the  death  of  his 
son : a 

1  Mr.  Paige.  stanzas,  which  I  have  sent  to  Mrs.  Web- 

2  In  a  note  to  Mrs.  Ticknor  at  Balti-  ster.     I  have  made  this  copy  for  your 
more,  enclosing  a  copy  of  these  lines,  he  eyes  and  your  husband's — and  for  no 
said :  "  I  occupied  a  lonely  hour  on  Sat-  other  human  beings." — (MSS.  in  the  au- 
urday  evening  in  composing  these  little  thor's  possession.} 


230  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

"  The  staff  on  which  my  years  should  lean 

Is  broken  ere  those  years  come  o'er  me; 
My  funeral  rites  thou  shouldst  have  seen, 
But  thou  art  in  the  tomb  before  me. 

"Thou  rear'st  to  me  no  filial  stone, 

No  parent's  grave  with  tears  beholdest; 
Thou  art  my  ancestor — my  son  ! 
And  stand'st  in  Heaven's  account  the  oldest. 

"  On  earth  my  lot  was  soonest  cast, 

Thy  generation  after  mine ; 
Thou  hast  thy  predecessor  past, 
Earlier  eternity  is  thine. 

"I  should  have  set  before  thine  eyes 

The  road  to  Heaven,  and  showed  it  clear ; 
But  thou,  untaught,  spring'st  to  the  skies, 
And  leav'st  thy  teacher  lingering  here. 

"  Sweet  seraph,  I  would  learn  of  thee, 
And  hasten  to  partake  thy  bliss ! 
And,  oh  !  to  thy  world  welcome  me, 
As  first  I  welcomed  thee  to  this." 

The  business  of  legislation,  the  demands  of  society,  the 
responsibilities  of  the  presidential  election,  then  pending  be 
fore  the  House,  are  reflected  in  his  correspondence  of  this 
winter,  together  with"  the  memory  of  this  affliction.  He  car 
ried  a  heavy  heart  into  most  of  the  scenes  in  which  he  par 
ticipated  during  this  session. 

[MB.  WEBSTER  TO  MRS.  TICKNOR,  AT   BALTIMORE.] 

"  HOUSE  OF  BEPRESENTATIVES,  January  17, 1825. 

"  Mr.  "Wallenstein  has  given  me,  my  dear  Mrs.  Ticknor,  your  very  kind 
note,  and  I  cannot  well  tell  you  how  much  it  has  gratified  my  feelings.  You 
have  inferred  nothing,  my  dear  lady,  and  can  infer  nothing,  of  my  regard 
and  affection  for  yourself  and  your  husband,  more  than  the  truth,  nor 
equal  to  the  truth.  And  I  beg  you  to  believe  that  there  are  none  in  the 
world  whose  regard  and  kind  feelings  I  wish  more  to  cultivate  and 
secure. 

"  Our  six  weeks'  acquaintance  has  been  to  me  a  mixture  of  high  enjoy 
ment  and  severe  suffering.  The  former  I  owe,  mainly,  to  you  and  Mr. 
Ticknor ;  the  last  I  take,  and  would  wish  to  bear,  as  a  common  visitation 
of  a  kind  Providence.  Yet  I  have  felt  it  more  than  might  have  been  ex- 


1825.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  231 

pected,  and  my  spirits  recover  slowly.  I  am  sure  that  Mrs.  Webster  and 
yourself  are  congenial  and  assimilated  spirits,  and  that  she  will  cultivate 
your  acquaintance  with  delight.  Let  us  hope  that  circumstances  may 
favor  an  habitual  intercourse.  At  any  rate,  be  assured  that  the  principle 
of  regard  and  affection  will  live  in  my  heart. 

"  I  write  this  in  the  House,  while  Mr.  Clay  is  speaking  on  the  Cumber 
land  Eoad.  The  ladies  are  all  present,  inside  the  House.  I  have  not  re 
viewed  them ;  for  I  am  sure  there  is  none  of  them  that  I  have  lately  seen 
or  know,  unless  it  may  be  Mrs.  (A.  H.)  Everett.  I  see  Wallenstein  among 
them,  as  becomes  a  diplomatist.  Mr.  Clay  speaks  well.  I  wish  you  were 
here  to  hear  him.  The  highest  enjoyment,  almost,  which  I  have  in  life,  is 
in  hearing  an  able  argument  or  speech.  The  development  of  mind,  in 
those  modes,  is  delightful.  In  books,  we  see  the  result  of  thought  and 
of  fancy.  In  the  living  speaker,  we  see  the  thought  itself,  as  it  rises 
in  the  speaker's  own  mind.  And  his  countenance  often  indicates  a  per 
ception  before  it  gets  upon  his  tongue.  I  have  been  charmed  by  observ 
ing  this  operation  of  minds  which  are  truly  great  and  vigorous  ;  so 
that  I  sometimes  am  as  much  moved,  as  in  reading  a  part  of  Milton  and 
Shakespeare,  by  a  striking  and  able  argument,  although  on  the  dryest 
subject. 

"  Mr.  Wallenstein  says  you  are  to  leave  Baltimore  on  Thursday.  There 
is,  as  yet,  no  Northern  mail  to-day.  Should  there  be  one,  and  in  it  letters 
for  you,  they  shall  be  forwarded  in  due  season.  I  shall  flatter  myself  with 
the  hope  of  hearing  from  you,  not  once  only,  but  often,  before  you  reach 
the  little  peninsula  of  Boston.  Pray  ask  your  husband  if  he  has  written  to 
Dr.  Warren. 

"  Yours  most  truly, 

"  DANL.  WEBSTER." 

[FROM  MR.  TICKNOR,  AT  BALTIMORE.] 

"  BALTIMORE,  January  19, 1825. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  We  think  it  was  rather  hard  in  you  to  wait  till  we 
were  just  out  of  the  district,  and  then  make  a  great  speech.  We  have 
heard  all  about  it,  and  all  Mr.  Clay  said,  and  all  Mr.  Livingston  said,  and 
all  everybody  said  in  its  praise.  We  had  no  right  to  complain  of  the 
speaker's1  taking  such  instant  advantage  of  our  absence;  but  we  thought 
our  own  member  might  have  given  his  constituents  a  chance  to  tell  of  him 
when  they  get  home.  But  we  will  have  our  revenge  of  you  by  reading  it 
twice  over  in  a  bad  report  of  it. 

"  I  spent  the  last  evening  at  old  Mr.  Carroll's.  He  was  well  and  cheer 
ful — much  more  remarkably  preserved  for  eighty-eight,  than  Mr.  Jefferson 
for  eighty-two.  When  he  first  heard  of  General  Harper's  death,  the  shock 
reached  his  mind,  and  his  memory  was  affected  for  a  few  hours ;  but  his 
perfect  equanimity,  which  is  a  chief  source  of  his  unvarying  health,  soon 
restored  him,  and  he  is  now  able  to  talk  on  all  subjects  as  usual  and  on  his 

1  Mr.  Clay. 


232  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

recent  loss  with  perfect  composure.  Indeed,  as  he  well  said  and  deeply 
felt,  a  loss  of  this  sort  at  eighty-eight  is  very  sure  to  be  soon  made  up.  I 
was  much  gratified  with  my  visit,  and  intend  to  go  again  this  evening,  to 
meet  General  Lafayette.  It  is  hard,  however  to  go  without  Anna,  for  I 
was  more  desirous  she  should  see  Mr.  Carroll  than  anybody  in  Baltimore. 
But  she  shall  see  him  yet. 

"  I  entirely  forgot  to  tell  you  yesterday,  that  I  had  written  to  Dr.  War 
ren.  I  did  it  the  day  after  you  told  me  you  would  be  faithful  to  the  17th 
of  June,  for  I  remembered  the  old  rule  of  striking  while  the  iron  is  hot.  I 
have  written  too  to  Mr.  Quincy,  telling  him  he  may  probably  have  the  gen 
eral  l  for  July  4th  by  asking  for  him. 

"  Anna  desires  her  love,  and  we  all  desire  to  hear  from  you  as  often  as 
may  be.  We  have  few  amusements  here,  for  I  do  not  care  to  go  abroad 
alone,  and  your  letters  are  as  apples  of  gold  set  in  pictures  of  silver. 

"  Yours  always, 

"  GEO.  TICKNOR." 


[TO  ME.  TICKNOR,  AT  BALTIMORE.] 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  January  20, 1825. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  owe  you  for  two  very  kind  letters,  and  the  only  pain 
ful  circumstance  they  mention  is  Mrs.  Ticknor's  health.  I  am  truly  sorry 
that  any  thing  should  interrupt  her  enjoyment  of  the  society  of  Baltimore. 
You  must  certainly  stay  long  enough  for  her  to  see  Mr.  Carroll.  The  op 
portunity  may  not  again  occur. 

"  We  are  to-day  engaged  on  the  canal.  Several  speeches  have  been 
filed  in.  Mr.  Breck  is  now  speaking.  It  must  have  been  the  good  Wal- 
lenstein  who  wrote  you  about  my  little  speech — for  it  was  a  very  little  one. 
We  think  our  Eastern  candidate  grows  a  little  stronger  in  the  prospect  of 
the  presidency.  As  the  time  draws  near,  we  hear  more  conversation  on 
the  subject;  but  every  thing  is  yet  uncertain. 

"  I  go  to-night  to  pass  the  evening  with  Wallenstein.  My  friend  Dr. 
Sewall  has  proposed  him  as  a  member  of  the  '  Columbian  Institute ; '  so 
the  doctor  and  I  are  going  to  pick  a  pheasant's  wing  on  the  occasion. 

"  I  have  to-day  no  letters  from  Boston — and  hear  little  news  from  that 
quarter,  since  the  great  explosion.  Mr.  Gannet  has  gone  to-day  to  Mount 
Vernon.  He  left  me  a  card  without  notation  of  place,  and  I  know  not 
where  to  seek  for  him. 

"  Give  my  best  and  most  true  regards  to  Mrs.  Ticknor.  I  should  be 
glad  to  read  Shakespeare — or  Mr.  Tucker — or  Mrs.  Hutchinson — or  any 
thing  else  to  her,  that  would  make  her  forget  the  oppression  of  her  cold. 
I  hope  to  hear  from  her  soon,  and  hear  that  she  is  better. 

"  Yours  always  truly, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"  I  sent  you  one  letter,  enclosed,  yesterday — have  none  to-day." 
1  Lafayette. 


1825.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  233 

[TO  MR.  TICKSTOR,  AT  BALTIMORE.] 

Tuesday  evening,  8  o'clock. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  This  is  all  I  have  for  you.  I  expect,  indeed,  something 
further,  as  Wallenstein  said  he  should  inquire  at  the  P.  O.  about  this  time. 
If  it  comes,  I  shall  enclose  it  to  you. 

"  I  have  been  to  dine  with  Mr.  Galhoun.  He  talked  to  me,  among 
other  things,  of  your  good  fortune  in  picking  up  a  companion  on  the  road 
of  life.  I  did  not  think  that  a  subject  on  which  I  was  bound  to  quarrel 
with  a  Secretary  of  "War,  whatever  I  might  think  of  the  matter.  Mr.  Cal- 
houn  is  a  true  man. 

"  Shall  I  learn,  to-morrow,  when  you  leave  Baltimore  ? 

"  God  bless  you  and  yours ! 

"D.  W." 

[FROM  MRS.  WEBSTER,  AT  BOSTON.] 

Saturday  morning,  January  22, 1825. 

"  MY  DEAR  HUSBAND  :  I  was  sitting  alone  in  my  chamber  reflecting  on 
the  brief  life  of  our  sainted  little  boy,  when  your  letter  came  enclosing 
those  lines  of  yours,  which  to  a  '  mother's  eye '  are  precious.  Oh,  my  hus 
band,  have  not  some  of  our  brightest  hopes  perished !  '  Our  fairest  flow 
ers  are,  indeed,  blossoms  gathered  for  the  tomb.'  But  do  not,  my  dear 
husband,  do  not  let  these  afflictions  weigh  too  heavily  upon  you ;  those 
dear  children  who  had  such  strong  holds  on  us  while  here,  now  allure  us 

to  heaven : 

On  us  with  looks  of  love  they  bend, 
For  us  the  Lord  of  life  implore ; 
And  oft  from  sainted  bliss  descend, 
Our  wounded  spirits  to  restore. 

"  Farewell,  my  beloved  husband  !  I  have  not  time  to  write  more,  only 
to  say  I  regret  you  have  lost  the  pleasure  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ticknor's  so 
ciety,  which  you  so  much  need.  I  fear  Mrs.  Dwight  is  not  much  benefited 
by  her  voyage,  so  the  last  accounts  appear ;  though  at  first  they  thought 
her  better. 

"  The  children  are  tolerably  well,  though  not  free  from  colds. 

"  Your  ever  affectionate 

"G.W." 

[TO  MRS.  TICKNOR,  AT  PHILADELPHIA.] 

HOTTSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  February  4, 1825. 

"  MY  DEAR  LADY  :  I  am  right  glad  to  find  a  little  place  left  for  me  in 
Mr.  Wallenstein's  letter,  and  to  find  it  so  flatteringly  filled.  I  use  the  pres 
ent  moment  to  acknowledge  this  favor,  while  Mr.  McDuffie  is  making  a 
very  warm  speech,  I  hardly  know  why  or  wherefore ;  but  it  relates  to  the 
rules  of  proceeding  in  electing  a  President  next  week,  and  he,  being  a 
pretty  ardent  Jackson  man,  seems  inclined  to  make  a  kind  of  Jackson 


234  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XL 

speech.  I  told  Mr.  Wallenstein  to  tell  you  that  I  should  write  you  during 
the  first  long  speech — and,  depend  upon  it,  the  act  of  writing  is,  in  such 
cases  or  most  of  them,  less  onerous  than  the  act  of  listening.  The  Hall  of 
Congress  is  an  admirable  situation  to  cultivate  the  powers  of  an  organ 
which  has  been  generally  too  much  neglected  in  its  education;  I  mean  the 
ear.  Now  I  have  so  disciplined  this  little  member  that,  on  being  informed 
that  I  am  not  particularly  concerned  to  know  what  is  said,  and  requested 
to  '  bring  me  no  more  reports,'  it  very  faithfully  performs  its  duty,  and 
leaves  me  quite  at  ease  to  pursue  any  vocation  I  may  choose.  The  '  en 
closed  petty  spirits '  are  left  entirely  undisturbed  by  what  prevails  with 
out.  This  is  an  admirable  improvement  on  the  old  maxim,  '  Hear  with 
both  ears.'  I  hear  with  neither. 

"  Times  have  a  good  deal  changed  with  me,  my  dear  lady,  since  your 
departure.  The  business  of  Congress  has  become  more  urgent — the  event 
draws  near — the  session  is  wearing  off—  I  begin  to  see  home  at  the  end  of 
no  long  prospect,  and  all  these  things  create  a  little  activity  and  bustle, 
which  serve,  in  some  poor  measure,  to  fill  up  such  portions  of  time  as  I 
usually  passed  in  your  house,  while  you  remained  here. 

"  I  am  glad  to  learn  that  you  are  entered  so  favorably  into  the  society 
of  Philadelphia.  I  think  you  will  find  it  very  intelligent  and  agreeable ; 
but  am  not  afraid,  nevertheless,  that  it  will  lead  you  to  be  dissatisfied  with 
a  little  peninsula  running  into  Massachusetts  Bay. 

"  Give  my  love  to  your  husband.  There  seem  to  have  been  proceedings 
about  the  college,  which  must  interest  him.  I  hope  he  is  satisfied  with 
the  result.  Remember  me  also  to  Miss  Gardiner. 

"  Yours  most  truly, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"  Mr.  Sturgis  says  he  had  the  pleasure  of  passing  a  very  gratifying 
hour  at  your  room  in  Philadelphia.  Let  me  have  a  letter  from  you  before 
you  leave  Philadelphia." 

[TO  MB.  TICKNOR,  AT  PHILADELPHIA.] 

February  4, 1825. 

"I  have  only  time  to  send  love.  W.  has  been  a  little  unwell — I 
have  not  seen  him  for  two  days,  but  expect  him  this  evening.  I  thought 
of  you  all  day  yesterday,  during  the  storm.  I  hope  you  were  and  are 
well  and  safe.  I  should  have  felt  less  concern  but  for  Mrs.  Ticknor's  cold. 
"It  is  confidently  believed  that  New  England  will  give  a  President, 
Kentucky  concurrente.  D.  W." 

[TO  MR.  TICKNOR,  AT  BOSTON.] 

SENATE,  Wednesday,  3  o'clock  (February  11). 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  been  looking  in  vain  for  your  promised  letter. 
Be  assured,  I  am  anxious  to  hear  from  you,  and  to  know  how  yours  and 


1825.]  ELECTION  OF  MR.  ADAMS.  235 

Mrs.  Ticknor's  health  is.    Pray  find  or  make  opportunity  to  give  me  a 
line. 

"  We  have  just  returned  from  counting  the  votes  and  announcing  the 
election.  General  Jackson  arrived  here  at  nine  this  morning.  I  have  not 
seen  him  nor  anybody  that  has  seen  him. 

"  With  great  love  to  Mrs.  Ticknor,  and  in  the  hope  of  hearing  from  you, 

"  I  am  yours, 

"D.WEBSTER. 
"  Mr.  Quincy  has  not  yet  arrived." 


The  presidential  election  of  1825,  which,  is  referred  to  in  the 
last  note,  should  not  be  passed  over  without  giving  at  least  a 
brief  account  of  Mr.  Webster's  relation  to  it.  Of  the  four  prin 
cipal  candidates,  General  Jackson  had  99  electoral  votes,  Mr. 
Adams  84,  Mr.  Crawford  41,  and  Mr.  Clay  37.  Mr.  Calhoun 
had  been  chosen  Yice-President  by  the  electoral  colleges,  by  a 
very  large  majority.  The  election  in  the  House  being  deter 
mined  by  the  votes  of  States,  and  the  choice  being  confined  by 
the  Constitution  to  the  three  highest  candidates  on  the  list  of 
the  electoral  votes,  Mr.  Clay  was  not  before  the  House ;  but  it 
soon  became  apparent  that,  if  he  and  his  friends  were  to  give 
their  votes  to  Mr.  Adams  on  the  first  ballot,  the  choice  must  lie 
between  Mr.  Adams  and  General  Jackson  ;  but,  if  they  gave 
their  votes  to  Mr.  Crawford,  the  final  choice  would  be  between 
that  gentleman  and  General  Jackson.  Mr.  Webster  had  no 
strong  personal  preferences  for  Mr.  Adams ;  and,  so  far  as  there 
were  any  remains  of  old  party  distinctions  or  connections,  he 
was  not  likely  to  favor  Mr.  Adams's  election.  As  one  who  re 
spected  the  old  Federal  party  and  who  had  himself  acted  with 
it,  Mr.  Webster  might  have  remembered  Mr.  Adams's  efforts  to 
bring  it  into  disrepute  ;  nor  was  he,  although  a  Representative 
from  Massachusetts,  personally  intimate  with  Mr.  Adams.  But 
Mr.  Adams  had  received  the  electoral  votes  of  all  the  New- 
England  States,  and  Mr.  Webster  felt  bound  to  give  effect  to 
this  expression  of  the  popular  voice  in  that  region,  so  far  as  he 
could  consistently  with  his  convictions  of  what  the  welfare  of 
the  country  required.  Between  Mr.  Adams  and  General  Jack 
son,  moreover,  he  would  have  preferred  the  former,  for  the  prin 
cipal  claims  of  the  latter  on  the  office  were  those  of  a  popular 
military  chieftain,  a  class  of  men  from  whom  Mr.  Webster  was 


236  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

always  unwilling  to  select  a  President.  But,  of  all  the  promi 
nent  men  then  before  the  country,  Mr.  "Webster  would  have 
preferred  Mr.  Calhoun  for  the  presidency,  if  he  could  have  had 
a  free  and  unrestricted  choice.  He  had  a  very  high  estimate 
of  Mr.  Calhoun's  abilities  and  patriotism,  and  there  was  then 
no  fundamental  difference  in  their  opinions  on  great  constitu 
tional  questions.  But,  in  the  present  condition  of  things,  Mr. 
Calhoun  could  not  become  President,  unless  the  office  should 
be  devolved  on  him  by  the  failure  of  the  House  to  elect  a  Presi 
dent  before  the  4th  day  of  March.  The  election  was  fixed  for 
the  9th  of  February. 

Under  these  perplexing  circumstances,  Mr.  Webster  con 
sulted  his  friends  at  home,  and  especially  his  brother,  on  whose 
calm  and  solid  judgment,  in  all  things  public  or  private,  he 
placed  great  reliance,  as  to  what  was  proper  to  be  done  in  two 
or  three  contingencies.  To  his  brother  he  stated  the  contin 
gencies 'thus  : 

1.  "  If  on  the  first  or  any  subsequent  ballot  Mr.  Adams  falls  behind 
Mr.  Crawford,  and  remains  so  a  day  or  two,  shall  we  hold  out  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter,  or  shall  we  vote  for  one  of  the  highest  ? 

2.  If  for  one  of  the  highest,  say  Jackson  and  Crawford,  for  which  ? 

3.  Is  it  advisable,  under  any  circumstances,  to  hold  out  and  leave  the 
chair  to  Mr.  Calhoun  ? 

4.  Would  or  would  not  New  England  prefer  conferring  the  power  on 
Calhoun,  to  a  choice  of  General  Jackson  ?  " x 

The  advice  which  Mr.  "Webster  received,  and  which  entirely 
concurred  with  his  own  judgment,  was,  that  the  votes  of  New 
England  ought  to  be  given  to  Mr.  Adams  on  the  first  ballot, 
and  thenceforward  steadily,  so  long  as  there  should  be  a  reason 
able  chance  of  his  election.  Mr.  Adams  was  elected  on  the 
first  ballot.  This  result  was  fortunate  for  the  country ;  for, 
although  his  election  was  followed  by  a  charge  of  corrupt 
coalition  between  Mr.  Clay  and  himself,  the  evils  and  mischiefs 
and  heart-burnings  of  that  unfounded  accusation  were  not  to  be 
compared  to  the  dangers  that  would  have  ensued  from  a  pro 
longation  of  the  contest.  Mr.  "Webster,  who  had  no  particular 
connection  with  the  interests  of  Mr.  Adams  or  Mr.  Clay,  was, 
of  course,  never  involved  in  that  charge.  He  never  believed 

1  Correspondence,  i. 


1825.]  COURSE   OF  MR.  ADAMS.  237 

that  it  had  any  foundation,  although  he  considered  that  some 
of  the  steps  taken  by  Mr.  Clay  in  repelling  it  were  not  well 
judged. 

There  was  one  interview,  and  I  believe  but  one,  between 
Mr.  Adams  and  Mr.  Webster,  on  the  subject  of  this  election, 
which  places  in  a  very  striking  light  the  objects  which  Mr. 
"Webster  sought  from  Mr.  Adams,  in  case  of  his  election,  and 
the  extent  of  the  whole  understanding  between  them  respecting 
Mr.  Adams's  course.  Mr.  "Webster  desired  to  see  an  adminis 
tration  of  the  Government  that  would  not  seek  to  revive  or 
perpetuate  the  old  party  distinctions  by  a  distribution  of  offices 
of  trust  among  men  called  by  one  party  denomination.  He 
thought  that  the  welfare  of  the  country  required  this  abnegation 
of  party,  and  that  it  could  be  sufficiently  signified  by  one  clear 
and  distinct  case  of  an  appointment  of  a  Federalist  to  office, 
which  would  show  that  the  having  been  of  that  party  was  not 
to  operate  as  a  cause  of  exclusion.  The  result  would  be,  that 
the  Administration  would  be  left  free  to  call  to  the  public  ser 
vice  the  best  ability  and  the  purest  character.  Entertaining 
these  opinions,  Mr.  "Webster,  on  the  3d  of  February,  received  a 
letter  from  Mr.  "Warfield,  one  of  the  Representatives  from  Mary 
land,  who  had  been  a  Federalist,  and  whose  political  friends  at 
home  feared  that  Mr.  Adams  would  build  up  again  the  old  land 
marks  of  party  distinction.  Oppressed  with  the  responsibility 
of  his  position  in  his  own  delegation — since  his  vote  might 
decide  the  vote  of  his  State — this  gentleman  desired  Mr.  "Web 
ster's  opinion  as  to  the  mode  in  which  he  ought  to  act.  Two 
days  afterward,  Mr.  "Webster  returned  him  the  following  answer : 


[ME.  WEBSTER   TO  MR.  WARFIELD.] 

"  HOUSE  OF  BEPRESENTATIVES,  February  5, 1825. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  received  your  note  of  yesterday,  and  reflected 
on  its  contents,  and  am  very  willing  to  answer  it,  as  far  as  I  can,  without 
incurring  the  danger  of  misleading  you  in  the  discharge  of  the  delicate 
and  important  trust  belonging  to  your  present  situation. 

"  I  must  remark,  in  the  first  place,  that  my  acquaintance  with  Mr. 
Adams,  although  friendly  and  respectful,  I  hope,  on  both  sides — certainly 
so  on  mine — is  not  particular.  I  can  say  nothing,  therefore,  on  the  present 
occasion  by  any  authority  derived  from  him. 


238  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XI. 

"  Being  in  a  situation,  however,  not  altogether  unlike  your  own,  I  have 
naturally  been  anxious,  like  yourself,  to  form  an  opinion  as  to  what  would 
be  the  course  of  his  Administration  in  regard  to  the  subject  alluded  to  by 
you.  For  myself,  I  am  satisfied,  and  shall  give  him  my  vote  cheerfully 
and  steadily.  And  I  am  ready  to  say  that  I  should  not  do  so  if  I  did  not 
believe  that  he  would  administer  the  Government  on  liberal  principles, 
not  excluding  Federalists,  as  such,  from  his  regard  and  confidence. 

"  I  entertain  this  feeling,  not  because  I  wish  to  see  any  number  of 
offices,  or  any  particular  office,  given  to  those  who  have  been  called  Fed 
eralists  ;  nor  because  there  is  a  number  of  such,  or  any  one,  that  I  par 
ticularly  desire  to  see  employed  in  the  public  service;  but  because  the 
time  is  come,  in  my  opinion,  when  we  have  a  right  to  know  whether  a 
particular  political  name,  in  reference  to  former  parties,  is,  of  itself,  to  be 
regarded  as  cause  of  exclusion. 

"  I  wish  to  see  nothing  like  a  portioning,  parcelling  out,  or  distributing 
offices  of  trust  among  men  called  by  different  denominations.  Such  a  pro 
ceeding  would  be  to  acknowledge  and  to  regard  the  existence  of  distinc 
tions;  whereas  my  wish  is,  that  distinctions  should  be  disregarded. 
What  I  think  just  and  reasonable  to  be  expected  is,  that,  by  some  one  clear 
and  distinct  case,  it  may  be  shown  that  the  distinction  above  alluded  to 
does  not  operate  as  cause  of  exclusion.  Some  such  case  will  doubtless 
present  itself,  and  may  be  embraced  probably  in  proper  time  and  manner, 
if  thought  expedient  to  embrace  it,  without  prejudice  to  the  pretensions 
or  claims  of  individuals.  The  Government  will  then  be  left  at  liberty  to 
call  to  the  public  service  the  best  ability  and  the  purest  character.  It 
will  then  be  understood  that  the  field  is  open,  and  that  men  are  to  stand 
according  to  their  individual  merits.  So  far  as  this,  I  think  it  just  to  ex 
pect  the  next  Administration  to  go.  At  any  rate,  it  is  natural  to  wish  to 
know  what  may  probably  be  expected  in  this  regard. 

"  While  with  these  sentiments,  which,  my  dear  sir,  are  as  strong  in  my 
breast  as  they  can  be  in  yours,  I  am  willing  to  support  Mr.  Adams,  and  to 
give  him  my  vote  and  influence,  I  must  again  remind  you  that  my  judg 
ment  is  made  up,  not  from  any  understanding  or  communication  with  him, 
but  from  general  considerations ;  from  what  I  think  I  know  of  his  liberal 
feelings,  from  his  good  sense  and  judgment,  and  from  the  force  of  circum 
stances.  I  assure  you,  very  sincerely,  that  I  have  a  full  confidence  that 
Mr.  Adams's  Administration  will  be  just  and  liberal  toward  Federalists  as 
toward  others ;  and  I  need  not  say  that  there  is  no  individual  who  would 
feel  more  pain  than  myself,  if  you  and  the  rest  of  our  friends  should  ever 
find  reason  to  doubt  the  solidity  of  the  foundation  on  which  this  confi 
dence  rests. 

"  NOTE. — I  read  this,  precisely  as  it  now  stands  here,  to  Mr.  Adams,  on 
the  evening  of  February  4th.  He  said,  when  I  had  got  through,  that  the 
letter  expressed  his  general  sentiments,  and  such  as  he  was  willing  to  have 
understood  as  his  sentiments.  There  was  one  particular,  however,  on 


1825.]  INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENTS.  239 

which  he  wished  to  make  a  remark.  The  letter  seemed  to  require  him,  or 
expect  him,  to  place  one  Federalist  in  the  administration.  Here  I  interrupt 
ed  him,  and  told  him  he  had  misinterpreted  the  writer's  meaning.  That 
the  letter  did  not  speak  of  those  appointments  called  Cabinet  appoint 
ments  particularly,  but  of  appointments  generally.  With  that  under 
standing  he  said  the  letter  contained  his  opinions,  and  he  should  feel  it 
his  duty,  by  some  such  appointment,  to  mark  his  desire  of  disregarding 
party  distinctions.  He  thought  either  of  them,  if  elected,  must  necessarily 
act  liberally  in  this  respect.  In  consequence  of  this  conversation,  I  inter 
lined,  in  this  letter,  the  words  '  in  proper  time  and  manner.'  I  made  no 
other  alteration  in  it." 

What  Mr.  Webster's  opinions  were  on  the  subject  of  inter 
nal  improvements,  and  under  what  circumstances  they  were 
formed  in  1816,  the  reader  has  seen.  At  this  session  a  very 
interesting  debate  took  place  in  the  House  upon  a  bill  to  pro 
vide  for  the  continuation  of  the  Cumberland  road  to  Zanesville, 
in  Ohio ;  a  national  road,  commencing  at  Baltimore,  and  then 
completed  as  far  as  Wheeling.  The  bill  was  opposed  by  Mr. 
McDuffie,  of  South  Carolina,  as  partial  and  sectional.  He  con 
sidered  that  the  true  course  for  Congress  was  to  wait  until  a 
general  system  could  be  devised  and  put  into  operation  as  a 
whole,  with  reference  to  an  expenditure  graduated  somewhat 
according  to  the  amount  of  national  revenues  paid  in  the  par 
ticular  region  to  be  benefited.  Mr.  Webster  took  part  in  this 
discussion,  and  said  that,  on  this  subject,  as  on  all  others,  he 
wished  to  bring  to  the  discussion  a  right  feeling,  that  is,  a  truly 
national  feeling.  It  mattered  nothing  to  him  who  was  to  be 
immediately  benefited.  Tros  Tyriusve,  whether  an  inhabit 
ant  of  the  banks  of  the  Merrimac  of  New  Hampshire,  or  the 
Merrimac  of  Missouri,  he  cared  not ;  provided  he  be  a  sub 
ject  of  our  legislation,  he  has  claims,  said  Mr.  Webster,  on  my 
impartial  consideration.  If  he  had  been  led,  since  the  discus 
sion  of  1816,  to  alter  his  opinion  on  any  part  of  the  general 
subject  then  debated,  it  was  that  which  respects  an  equal  dis 
tribution  of  the  public  expenditures  through  the  different  parts 
of  the  Union  according  to  their  population.  He  doubted  ex 
tremely  the  propriety  and  even  the  power  of  Congress  to  carry 
on  legislation  on  the  principle  of  balancing  the  local  interests  of 
different  sections  of  the  country.  If  the  business  of  legislation 
had  been  committed  to  Congress  at  all,  the  whole  subject  is  in  its 


240  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

power  and  under  its  discretion.  .  .  .  When  Congress  legislates 
at  all,  it  must  legislate  for  a  whole,  not  for  twenty-four  parts. 
The  idea  had  been  brought  forward  as  being  calculated  to  pre 
vent  a  merely  local  legislation ;  but  it  was,  in  truth,  itself  a 
local  idea.  Such  a  system  would  rest  on  a  foundation  essen 
tially  vicious.  When  going  into  a  system  of  improvement,  the 
House  has  simply  to  inquire,  Where  is  improvement  most 
needed  ?  He  cared  not  whether  it  was  beyond  the  Alleghanies 
or  beyond  the  Missouri ;  wherever  it  was  most  needed,  there  it 
must  first  be  made. 

Mr.  Webster  further  defended  the  present  object,  by  con 
tending  that  the  opening  of  these  Western  roads  had  a  tendency 
to  settle  the  public  lands,  which  he  regarded  as  a  national  ob 
ject.  This  again  called  up  Mr.  McDuffie,  who  declared  him 
self  opposed  to  the  policy  of  selling  the  public  lands  at  the 
minimum  price  of  one  dollar  and  twenty-five  cents  per  acre, 
when  they  were  fairly  worth  fifteen  dollars  per  acre,  and  would 
sell  at  that  price  if  the  market  were  not  glutted.  This  policy 
had  the  tendency,  he  said,  to  drain  off  the  population  of  the  old 
States,  and  it  was  accompanied  by  an  artificial  system  of  grind 
ing  tariffs  to  counteract  the  effect  of  reducing  the  population  of 
those  States.  He  drew  a  somewhat  melancholy  picture  of  the 
impoverishment  of  the  Southern  States ;  but,  so  far  as  that  ap 
prehended  decay  depended  upon  a  tariff  policy,  he  did  not 
allude  to  the  South  Carolina  origin  of  that  policy.  Mr.  Web 
ster  replied  that  he  was  not  in  favor  of  selling  the  public  lands 
at  a  price  that  would  throw  them  into  the  hands  of  speculators, 
but  he  desired  to  have  them  offered  at  rates  that  would  encour 
age  their  settlement.  He  did  not  regard  it  as  desirable  to  pre 
vent  the  laboring  classes  of  the  Eastern  States  from  going  to 
any  part  of  our  territory  where  they  could  better  their  con 
dition.  The  emigration  was  the  natural  condition  of  a  country 
densely  populated  in  one  part  and  possessing  in  another  a  vast 
tract  of  unsettled  lands.  The  plan  of  the  gentleman,  he  said, 
went  to  reverse  the  order  of  Nature,  vainly  expecting  to  retain 
men  within  a  small  and  comparatively  unproductive  territory, 
who  have  "  all  the  world  before  them  where  to  choose."  For 
his  own  part,  he  was  in  favor  of  letting  population  take  its  own 
course ;  he  should  experience  no  feeling  of  mortification  if  any 


1825.]  WESTERN  POPULARITY.  241 

of  his  constituents  liked  better  to  settle  on  the  Kansas  or  the 
Arkansas,  or  the  Lord  knows  where,  within  our  territory ;  let 
them  go  and  be  happier  if  they  could.  "  The  gentleman  says 
our  aggregate  of  wealth  would  have  been  greater  if  our  popu 
lation  had  been  restrained  within  the  limits  of  the  old  States ; 
but  does  he  not  consider  population  to  be  wealth  ?  And  has  not 
this  been  increased  by  the  settlement  of  a  new  and  fertile  coun 
try  ?  Such  a  country  presents  the  most  alluring  of  all  prospects 
to  a  young  and  laboring  man  ;  it  gives  him  a  freehold — it  offers 
to  him  weight  and  respectability  in  society ;  and,  above  all,  it 
presents  to  him  a  prospect  of  a  permanent  provision  for  his 
children.  Sir,  these  are  inducements  which  never  were  resisted, 
and  never  will  be ;  and,  were  the  whole  extent  of  country  filled 
with  population  up  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  these  inducements 
would  carry  that  population  forward  to  the  shores  of  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  Sir,  it  is  vain  to  talk  ;  individuals  will  seek  their  own 
good,  and  not  any  artificial  aggregate  of  the  national  wealth  ; 
a  young,  enterprising,  and  hardy  agriculturist  can  conceive  of 
nothing  better  to  him  than  plenty  of  good  cheap  land." 

How  Mr.  Webster's  course  in  this  Congress  was  regarded  in 
the  "West,  will  appear  from  the  following  letter,  addressed  to 
him  by  one  of  the  Representatives  of  Ohio : 

[FEOM  THE  HON.  JOSEPH  VANCE.] 

"  UEBANA,  March  29, 1825. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  From  the  interest  you  took  during  the  last  Congress 
in  favor  of  some  of  the  important  measures  of  the  West,  you  have  not 
only  a  claim  on  the  gratitude  of  this  people,  but  are  entitled  to  know  the 
political  feelings  of  this  section  of  the  Union,  both  as  it  respects  yourself 
personally,  as  well  as  those  growing  out  of  the  late  presidential  election. 

"  On  my  way  home  I  passed  through  our  State  diagonally,  and  was 
everywhere  met  by  our  citizens  with  that  cordiality  and  good  feeling 
which  spoke  in  a  language  not  to  be  misunderstood  that  our  stand  in  favor 
of  Mr.  Adams  was  not  only  approved  but  received  with  a  degree  of  en 
thusiasm  unequalled  in  our  State  since  its  admission  into  the  Union. 
This  enthusiasm  and  good  feeling  was  no  doubt  as  much  the  result  of  a 
well-grounded  confidence  in  our  political  institutions  owing  to  the  manner 
in  which  the  question  was  settled  in  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  as  it 
was  to  that  of  the  elevation  of  the  present  incumbent  to  the  chief-magis 
tracy  of  the  nation. 

"  As  it  respects  yourself,  permit  me  to  say,  that  with  our  people  no  man 

IT 


242  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

in  this  nation  stands  on  more  elevated  ground,  and  so  far  from  a  wish  to 
proscribe  any  of  the  old  Federal  party,  their  paramount  wish  is,  that  tal 
ent,  integrity,  and  worth  should  be  the  only  passport  to  office,  regardless  of 
party  names  or  sectional  distinctions. 

"  In  conclusion,  permit  me  to  say,  that,  among  the  many  valued 
friends  I  have  made  in  Congress,  ^none  stands  higher  than  yourself,  and 
that  nothing  would  afford  me  more  pleasure  than  a  conscious  ability  to 
serve  you  in  attaining  under  this  government  a  standing  equal  to  your 
merit. 

"  Give  my  respects  to  friend  Baylies,  and  accept  for  yourself  the  sincere 
regard  of  your  friend, 

"JOSEPH  VANCE. 

"Mr.  Webster." 

At  this  session,  Mr.  Webster  introduced  and  carried  through 
the  House  the  Act  for  amending  the  criminal  code  of  the 
United  States,  which  has  sometimes  been  called  by  his  name, 
and  which  is  now  generally  referred  to  as  the  "  Crimes  Act  of 
1825."  The  undertaking  was  a  difficult  one ;  for  it  related  to 
a  subject  on  which  jealousy  of  Federal  jurisdiction  was  quite 
certain  to  be  aroused.  The  criminal  law  of  the  United  States 
had  remained  substantially  where  it  was  left  by  the  first  Con 
gress  that  sat  under  the  Constitution.  It  had  very  serious  de 
fects  and  omissions ;  yet  these  could  not  be  supplied  without 
exciting  much  opposition.  Mr.  Webster,  by  his  address  and 
by  the  fulness  of  his  learning  and  experience,  succeeded  in 
overcoming  that  opposition,  and  the  result  was  the  establish 
ment  of  a  criminal  code  for  the  United  States,  which  forty 
years  of  practical  working  have  stamped  as  one  of  the  great 
monuments  of  criminal  legislation. 

The  new  Administration  commenced  on  the  4th  of  March, 
1825.  Mr.  Clay  became  Secretary  of  State  ;  Richard  Rush,  of 
Pennsylvania,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  ;  and  James  Barbour, 
of  Virginia,  Secretary  of  War.  The  following  members  of  Mr. 
Monroe's  Cabinet  remained  in  office :  Mr.  Southard,  of  New 
Jersey,  as  Secretary  of  the  Navy  ;  Mr.  McLean,  of  Ohio,  as  Post- 
master-G-eneral,  and  Mr.  Wirt  as  Attorney-General.  Mr. 
Webster,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  sought  nothing  for  himself  or 
any  one  else  at  the  hands  of  the  new  President,  anticipated 
that  this  would  be  a  liberal  Administration,  and  considered  that 
it  was  his  true  course  to  support  it. 


1825.]  CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  MR.  DENISON.  243 

During  the  years  1824  and  1825,  four  young  English  states 
men — the  Earl  of  Derby,  then  Mr.  'Stanley,  Mr.  John  Evelyn 
Denison,  the  present  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons,  the 
late  Lord  Wharncliffe,  then  Mr.  Stuart  Wortley,  and  the  late 
Lord  Taunton,  then  Mr.  Labouchere — travelled  extensively  in 
this  country,  and  were  much  in  the  society  of  Mr.  "Webster  and 
Judge  Story.  From  that  period  is  to  be  dated  a  strong  friend 
ship  between  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Denison,  which  continued 
through  Mr.  "Webster's  life.  I  avail  myself  of  Mr.  Demson's 
permission,  to  print  some  portions  of  their  correspondence : 

[FROM  MR.  DENISON.] 

"  NEW  YORK,  April  27, 1835. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR :  We  got  here  last  night  from  our  tour  in  Virginia, 
which  the  long  distances  and  bad  roads  made  more  of  an  undertaking 
than  we  had  anticipated.  I  write  to  you,  as  I  promised,  without  a  mo 
ment's  loss  of  time,  but  it  is  to  tell  you  that  all  our  hopes  of  another 
week  with  you  at  Boston  are  over.  We  have  only  eight  days  more  on 
these  shores,  and  intend  to  sail  by  the  British  packet  on  the  5th.  It  is 
not  without  great  regret  that  I  give  up  this  last  chance  of  seeing  you  in 
this  country,  and  I  certainly  would  have  contrived  it  in  some  way  if  it 
were  not  for  the  good  assurances  I  have  that  we  shall  meet  at  no  very  distant 
period  in  England,  where  I  may  pass  much  more  time,  and  many  hours  of 
much  more  leisure  in  your  company,  than  a  hurried  visit  at  Boston  now 
would  allow  me.  Mr.  Rufus  King's  appointment  appears  to  have  given 
very  general  satisfaction,  in  which  I  heartily  join,  and,  out  of  many  reasons, 
for  none  more  than  because  I  imagine  it  will  fall  in  well  with  your  views, 
and  further  the  prospects  you  once  mentioned  in  a  conversation  to  me.  I 
should  be  very  glad  to  have  this  confirmed  by  you.  I  have  written  to  our 
most  excellent  Judge,1  as  he  desired  me  when  we  parted  at  Philadelphia, 
to  tell  him  the  day  we  sail,  and  how  impossible  it  is  for  us  to  visit  Salem 
again,  but  I  have  insisted  that  this  is  not  to  be  a  solemn  leave-taking,  and 
that  the  vision  which  now  floats  before  my  eyes,  of  our  active  and  vigor 
ous  friend  surveying  his  robed,  and  ermined,  and  gouty  brothers  of  West 
minster  Hall,  is  to  be  realized.  He  is  to  see  Lord  Eldon  on  his  wool 
sack,  and  we  are  to  wander  together  through  the  aisles  of  Westminster 
Abbey. 

"  I  don't  know  what  to  expect  about  the  continuance  of  the  session  of 
Parliament  after  our  arrival  in  England.  They  have  done  a  great  deal  of 
most  important  business ;  but  I  do  not  regret  my  absence  from  England,  or 
think  I  could  have  spent  one  moment  of  my  time  better  than  in  this  coun 
try.  You  see  we  are  verifying  your  predictions  to  Congress  in  April,  '24, 

1  Mr.  Justice  Story. 


244  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

as  fast  as  we  can  reasonably  be  expected,  by  our  policy  at  home  and 
abroad.  By  the  time  you  pay  us  a  visit,  Mr.  Robinson  will  let  us  make 
you  tipsy  on  good  French  wine  almost  for  nothing.  The  first  branch  of 
Huskisson's  new  proposals  for  the  regulation  of  colonial  trade  appears  to 
me  the  most  important  measure  produced  for  many  years,  as  well  as  the 
most  convincing  proof  of  the  real  disposition  of  our  Government.  The 
way  in  which  the  people  of  England  appear  to  be  conducting  themselves 
about  the  Catholics  is  still  more  important.  I  really  believe  that  an  effec 
tive  cry  of '  Ko  Popery '  could  hardly  now  be  raised  in  the  country.  If  it  is 
so,  the  mighty  change  can  be  attributed  only  to  the  diffusion  of  light  and 
knowledge  among  the  people,  and  to  the  long  and  open  discussion  of  the 
question.  The  triumph  of  discussion  will  be  greater  in  this  case,  than 
even  in  the  case  of  the  emancipation  of  slaves.  After  this,  Right  and 
Truth  need  never  despair. 

"  I  will  not  fail  to  write  to  you.    You  will  direct  me  by  your  letters  to 
the  subjects  about  which  you  feel  the  greatest  interest.    Wortley  and  La- 
bouchere  desire  their  best  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Webster  and  you. 
"  Believe  me, 

"  With  great  truth  and  friendship, 

"  Most  sincerely  yours, 

"  J.  EVELYN  DENISON. 

"  I  find  an  English  road-book  brought  by  accident  among  some  others 
with  us.  As  it  is  the  best  we  have,  and  a  late  and  correct  edition,  I 
thought  you  might  like  to  have  it.  You  may  now  travel  from  Liverpool 
to  London  with  the  same  ease  as  you  used  to  do  from  Hyde  Park  corner 
to  the  Bank,  and  learn  the  names  of  all  the  country-seats  by  the  way." 


{TO  MR.  DENISON.] 

"  BOSTON,  May  2, 1825. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  received  yours  of  the  27th  of  April,  and  most 
sincerely  regret  that  we  shall  not  see  you  again  among  us  before  you  leave 
our  continent.  The  good  Judge  will  be  inconsolable.  He  is  now  in 
Maine,  in  the  discharge  of  official  duties,  and  will  not,  I  fear,  be  home  in 
season  to  write  you  before  your  departure.  You  must  try  to  keep  our  little 
Boston  alive  in  your  recollections.  It  will  not  be  disagreeable  to  you, 
I  hope,  when  you  return  to  your  own  country,  and  to  the  midst  of  your 
own  associations  there,  to  know  that  there  are  those  on  this  side  the 
globe,  wholly  unknown  to  you  a  year  ago,  who  entertain  much  regard  for 
your  welfare.  For  me,  I  shall  take  care  to  keep  myself  in  remembrance,  I 
shall  contrive  pretences  to  write  you  often,  and  I  hope  to  hear  from  you 
sometimes. 

"  Mr.  King's  appointment  gives  very  general  satisfaction  ;  I  like 
it  very  much.  He  is  a  gentleman  of  great  worth  and  respectability, 
a  little  too  much  advanced  in  life,  perhaps,  to  be  expected  to  remain 


1825.]  CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  MR.  DENISON.  345 

long  in  the  situation.    I  think  the  President's  selection  fortunate  on  all 
accounts. 

"  I  assure  you,  my  dear  sir,  it  is  my  fixed  intention  to  see  England, 
within  two  or  three  years.  No  disappointment,  not  connected  with  my 
own  health,  or  that  of  my  family,  can  be  allowed  to  prevent  the  accom 
plishment  of  this  purpose.  Your  acquaintance  and  friendship  form  not 
only  an  additional  inducement,  but  an  important  reliance  and  resource,  in 
relation  to  such  a  visit. 

"  You  will  doubtless  find  Parliament  still  sitting,  although  many  great 
questions  will  be  disposed  of  before  you  will  be  able  to  show  yourselves  at 
Westminster.  I  have  read  the  proceedings  of  the  session  thus  far  with 
great  interest,  especially  Mr.  Robinson's  speech,  on  bringing  forward  the 
Budget,  and  Mr.  Huskisson's  two  speeches,  on  the  subject  of  the  proposed 
changes  in  the  laws  of  trade.  There  appears  to  me  to  be,  in  each  of  these 
gentlemen,  so  much  clearsightedness,  so  much  enlightened  liberality, 
united  to  so  much  general  ability,  as  to  fit  them  well  to  be  leading  min 
isters  in  your  government  at  this  most  interesting  period  of  the  world. 
I  regard  not  only  England,  but  all  the  civilized  states,  as  greatly  their 
debtors,  for  having  set  an  example  of  a  policy  so  wise,  and  so  beneficial, 
in  the  intercourse  of  commercial  states.  Their  success  thus  far  has  been 
greater,  I  think,  than  even  they  themselves  anticipated ;  and  I  most  sin 
cerely  partake  in  the  gratification  it  produces. 

"I  hope  you  will  remember  to  send  me  any  distinguished  Parliament 
ary  speeches  that  may  happen  to  be  separately  published.  I  believe  I 
have  not  omitted  this  particular  in  the  memorandum  you  were  good 
enough  to  take.  I  believe  I  shall  not  receive,  except  through  your 
agency,  the  volumes  of  Parliamentary  Debates,  of  which  you  took  a 
note.  On  this  subject,  however,  I  will  shortly  write  you,  to  your  address 
in  London. 

"  I  shall  be  very  glad  of  the  road-book  you  mentioned.  If  the  present 
rage  continues,  one  will  need  no  road-books ;  when  I  arrive  at  Liverpool,  I 
expect  to  embark  on  a  railway  for  London. 

"  I  beg  you  to  make  my  best  remembrances  to  Mr.  Wortley  and  Mr. 
Labouchere.  Mention  me  also  to  Colonel  Dawson,  if  he  be  now  with  you. 
I  saw  less  of  him  here  than  I  wished.  When  you  meet  Mr.  Stanley  in 
England,  be  kind  enough  to  remember  my  regards  to  him.  I  expect  to 
see  a  speech  from  him,  yet,  before  the  close  of  the  session.  Adieu,  my 
dear  sir,  and  I  pray  you  to  be  assured  of  my 

"  Faithful  friendship  and  entire  esteem. 

"  DANL.  WEBSTER. 

"  Mrs.  Webster  desires  me  to  give  her  farewell  to  you  and  your  friends, 
Wortley  and  Labouchere.  She  wishes  you  fair  winds,  a  prosperous  voy 
age,  and  a  happy  meeting  with  your  friends. 

"  If  Mr.  Stratford  Canning  should  return  to  England,  I  beg  you  to 
make  acceptable  to  him  my  best  regards." 


246  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 


[FROM  MR. 

"  NEW  YORK,  Evening  of  the  4th  (May),  1825. 

"My  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  just  got  your  letter,  and  cannot  refrain  from 
thanking  you,  and  sending  you  a  few  more  last  words  from  this  side  the 
water.  I  am  much  gratified  by  the  assurances  you  give  me  that  I  shall  not 
be  forgotten  by  some  of  your  countrymen,  in  whose  remembrances  I  shall 
be  very  anxious  and  proud  to  have  a  place.  This  year  of  my  life  will  be 
deeply  engraven  on  my  memory  ;  and  the  strongest  and  deepest  lines  will 
be  those  that  record  the  hours  spent  in  your  company,  and  in  that  of  our 
good  Judge  and  some  of  your  townsmen  —  I  will  take  care  of  the  Parlia 
mentary  Debates,  among  your  other  orders. 

"  Wortley  and  I  drove  over  this  morning  to  Mr.  Rufus  King's,  who  had 
desired  to  see  us  before  we  sailed.  We  found  him  in  good  health  and 
spirits.  He  told  us  that  he  did  not  look  forward  to  a  long  stay  ;  that  he 
had  hesitated  much,  before  he  accepted  the  appointment,  and  that  nothing 
but  the  strong  and  pressing  language  of  Mr.  Adams,  and  his  own  wish  to 
second  the  President's  endeavors  to  adjust  all  points  of  difference  between 
the  two  countries,  and  to  unite  them,  as  far  as  in  him  lay,  in  one  common 
interest  and  in  mutual  good-will,  would  have  induced  him  to  undertake 
the  mission.  No  man  is  better  fitted  to  bring  about  so  desirable  an  event  ; 
and  I  am  much  mistaken  if  he  will  not  find  our  Government  readily  and 
cordially  meet  him  in  all  his  advances. 

"  Pray  thank  Mrs.  Webster  for  her  kind  wishes,  and  give  her  mine  for 
the  health  and  prosperity  of  all  around  her. 

"  Colonel  Dawson  joins  us  in  best  remembrances.  Mr.  Canning  and 
Stanley  shall  have  your  messages,  and  I  know  both  will  be  proud  of  them. 

"  We  sail  to-morrow  in  the  middle  of  the  day. 

"  Yours  with  sincere  friendship, 

"  J.  EVELYN  DENISON." 

[TO    MR.    DENISON.] 

BOSTON,  June  6,  1825. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  You  perceive  that  I  do  not  intend  to  allow  you  time 
to  forget  your  Cisatlantic  friends  before  you  hear  from  some  of  us.  I  use 
this  opportunity  the  more  cheerfully,  as  my  friend  Mr.  Dutton,  of  this  city, 
goes  by  the  same  conveyance,  and  although  I  believe  he  has  a  letter  to  you 
from  your  very  good  friend  the  Judge,  and  although  I  believe  also  you 
saw  Mm  here,  I  must  beg  to  solicit  your  attention  and  regard  to  him,  if  he 
should  happen  to  come  where  you  are  in  England.  He  is  a  very  respect 
able  and  worthy  man. 

"  We  all  regretted  here  very  much  that  you  and  your  friends  did  not 
come  here  to  give  us  a  parting  look.  Nevertheless,  we  have  prayed  for 
prosperous  gales,  and  an  agreeable  voyage  for  you  all.  For  myself,  I  have 
been  very  quietly  at  home,  since  I  returned  from  Washington,  but  the 


1825.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  247 

Judge  and  myself  are  thinking  of  making  an  excursion,  to  commence  in 
the  course  of  this  month,  to  Niagara.  Since  the  adjournment  of  Con 
gress  we  have  little  political  news.  Mr.  Clay  is  gone  to  Kentucky,  and  ex 
pects,  I  believe,  to  be  well  received  by  his  friends,  notwithstanding  some 
complaints,  probably  not  general,  for  the  support  which  he  gave  to  the 
President.  We  look  for  Mr.  Rush  next  month.  Mr.  King  has  already 
sailed  to  take  his  place.  We  have  hopes  of  seeing  Mr.  Addington  so  far 
North  as  this  place  during  the  summer.  Wallenstein  is  already  at  New 
York.  I  believe  Mr.  Hopkinson  and  Mr.  Walsh  intend  us  a  visit  this 
month. 

"  When  you  shall  have  composed  yourself,  my  dear  sir,  and  settled 
your  brain,  disturbed  as  it  must  be  by  such  a  whirl  as  you  have  made 
round  so  great  a  part  of  our  continent,  I  shall  hope  to  hear  from  you. 
We  have  accounts  from  London  to  April  21st.  Mr.  Canning's  last  speech 
on  the  Catholic  question  is,  I  think,  a  most  admirable  performance.  Some 
men,  and  he  seems  to  be  one  of  them,  show  great  powers  under  the  pres 
sure  of  great  responsibility.  Certain  it  is,  that  his  late  parliamentary 
efforts  far  exceed  any  thing  which  is  to  be  found  of  his  at  an  earlier  date. 
I  go  far  enough  back,  of  course,  to  include  among  his  great  efforts  his 
speech  at  Liverpool. 

"  I  am  for  the  Catholic  emancipation ;  but  I  should  think,  nevertheless, 
that  its  friends  overrate  its  utility  and  importance  by  about  as  much  as 
its  enemies  overrate  its  mischief  and  danger.  You  must  excuse  this 
expression  of  opinion  on  a  matter,  of  the  merits  of  which  I  know  so 
little.  If  the  leading  speeches  on  this  (and  other)  subjects  should  be 
published  in  pamphlet  form,  I  should  be  very  glad  to  have  them.  I 
have  made  an  arrangement  with  Mr.  Burdett,  bookseller  of  this  place,  by 
which  his  correspondents  in  London  will  receive,  pay  for,  and  transmit 
hither  any  books  which  you  may  procure  or  order  for  me.  The  names  and 
address  of  these  correspondents  are,  Messrs.  Peter,  William,  and  George 
Wynne,  stationers,  Paternoster  Row.  When  you  took  my  memoranda,  it 
was  left  a  little  doubtful  whether  I  should  rely  on  you  to  be  able  to  com 
plete  my  set  of  Parliamentary  Debates.  My  other  hope  has  failed,  and  I 
now  wish  you  to  take  the  trouble  to  order  what  will  complete  my  set,  ac 
cording  to  the  minutes  taken  at  Washington.  I  think  of  nothing  in  par 
ticular  to  be  added  to  the  list,  with  which  I  troubled  you,  but  will  thank 
you  to  exercise  a  pretty  liberal  discretion,  in  regard  to  such  occasional 
publications,  especially  in  the  department  of  politics,  as  you  think  may  in 
terest  me.  I  would  like  well  enough  to  see  Sir  Egerton  Brydges's  book. 
The  books,  however,  which  I  mean  to  trouble  you  to  obtain,  are  only  such 
as  I  should  hardly  be  able  to  get  otherwise,  and  therefore  I  shall  not  at 
present  swell  the  list. 

"  I  pray  you  to  remember  me  to  your  fellow-travellers  in  America.  We 
cherish  the  hope  that  you  sometimes  think  of  us.  Mrs.  Webster  joins  me 
in  remembrance  and  regard  to  you.  I  shall  be  likely  to  trouble  you  often, 
and  trust  you  will  let  us  know  of  your  safe  arrival.  I  shall  expect,  of 


248  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XI. 

course,  that  if  any  friend  of  yours  shall  be  induced  to  visit  America,  you 
will  allow  me  to  be  known  to  him. 

"  I  am,  dear  sir,  yours  very  truly  and  sincerely, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

An  association  for  the  erection  of  a  monument  to  commem 
orate  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  had  been  for  some  time  in 
existence  in  Boston  and  its  neighborhood,  of  which  Mr.  Web 
ster  was  now  president.  As  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the 
battle  approached — the  17th  of  June,  1825 — it  was  determined 
that  the  corner-stone  of  the  monument  should  be  laid  on  that 
day,  with  appropriate  ceremonies  ;  and  Mr.  "Webster  was  unani 
mously  requested  by  his  fellow-trustees  to  deliver  the  address. 
General  Lafayette  was  then  making  that  tour  through  the 
United  States  which  became,  in  its  progress,  the  most  remark 
able  ovation  ever  given  in  this  country  to  any  man,  and  the 
arrangements  of  his  journey  were  so  made  as  to  admit  of  his 
being  present  on  this  occasion.  Among  the  reminiscences  fur 
nished  to  me  by  Mr.  Ticknor,  I  find  the  following  description 
of  the  scene,  the  orator,  and  the  address  : 

"  June  17, 1825. — Mr.  Webster  delivered  the  oration  on  laying  the  corner 
stone  of  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument.  He  was  president  of  the  association, 
and,  as  such,  presided  at  the  meeting  of  the  trustees  when  he  was  ap 
pointed.  On  the  evening  when  he  was  chosen,  being  present  as  one  of  the 
trustees,  he  took  me  aside,  and  asked  me  if  I  supposed  all  the  trustees 
would  prefer  to  have  him  deliver  the  address.  I  told  him  I  thought  there 
was  no  difference  of  opinion  on  the  point.  He  then  asked  if  I  thought  it 
would  be  well  for  him  to  accept,  doubting  whether  he  were  well  fitted  for 
it,  or  whether  the  president  of  the  society  should  be  its  orator.  I  told  him 
that  I  thought  he  would  fulfil  public  expectation  better  than  any  one  else ; 
and  that  I  thought  his  place  rather  called  on  him  to  perform  the  duty  than 
otherwise. 

"  He  often  talked  with  me  of  the  work  afterward,  and  seemed  quite 
anxious  about  it,  especially  after  it  was  decided  that  General  Lafayette 
could  be  present.  A  few  days  before  he  delivered  it,  he  read  it  over  to 
me.  The  magnificent  opening  gave  him  much  concern  ;  so  did  the 
address  to  Lafayette ;  but  about  that  to  the  Revolutionary  soldiers,  and 
the  survivors  of  the  battle,  he  said  that  he  felt  as  if  he  knew  how  to  talk 
to  such  men,  for  that  his  father,  and  many  of  his  father's  friends,  whom  he 
had  known,  had  been  among  them.  He  said  he  had  known  General 
Stark,  and  that  the  last  time  he  saw  him  was  in  a  tavern,  in  Concord,  not 
long  before  he  died,  when  he  said  to  him :  '  Daniel,  your  face  is  pretty 


1825.]  FIRST  BUNKER-HILL  ADDRESS.  249 

black,  but  it  isn't  so  black  as  your  father's  was  with  gunpowder  at 
the  Bennington  fight.'  He  added,  that  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  he  was 
peculiarly  familiar  with  those  men  and  those  times. 

"The  day  of  the  17th  was  very  propitious  for  laying  the  corner-stone. 
The  occasion  and  the  presence  of  General  Lafayette  had  brought  together 
immense  crowds  of  people  from  all  parts  of  the  country.  The  procession 
was  formed  at  the  State-House,  in  Boston,  and,  just  as  it  moved,  an  east 
erly  breeze  came  up,  that  tempered  the  air  delightfully  through  the  rest 
of  the  day.  We  arrived  in  good  season  on  the  hill,  where  more  than 
twenty  thousand  people  were  collected.  The  platform  from  which  Mr. 
Webster  spoke  was  at  the  bottom,  and  temporary  seats  for  several  thou 
sand  persons  were  arranged  on  the  rising  hill-side,  while,  near  the  brow 
above,  stood  a  dense  black  mass,  most  of  whom  could  hear  what  was  said. 
His  voice  was  very  clear  and  full,  and  his  manner  very  commanding.  Once, 
owing  to  the  great  press,  some  of  the  seats  and  barriers  gave  way,  and 
there  was  a  moment  of  considerable  confusion,  notwithstanding  the  efforts 
of  those  whose  duty  it  was  to  preserve  order.  One  of  these  gentlemen 
said  to  Mr.  Webster :  *  It  is  impossible,  sir,  to  restore  order.'  Mr.  Webster 
replied  with  a  good  deal  of  severity :  '  Nothing  is  impossible,  sir  ;  let  it  be 
done.'  Another  effort  was  made,  and  silence  was  obtained.1 

"  The  passage  about  the  rising  of  the  monument  and  the  address  to 
the  survivors  of  the  battle  were  the  most  effective  parts  of  the  oration. 
The  shouts  at  the  first  were  prolonged  until  it  seemed  as  if  they  would  not 
stop  ;  the  address  brought  tears  into  the  eyes  of  many,  and  bowed  down 
the  heads  of  the  veterans  themselves  to  conceal  their  emotion. 

"  When  it  was  all  over,  Governor  Barbour,  of  Virginia,  said  to  me :  '  If 
that  address  had  been  delivered  in  Virginia,  I  should  say  that  the  person 
who  made  it  was  sure  of  the  first  prize  in  the  national  lottery.' 

"  The  dinner,  under  the  great  awning  on  the  neighboring  hill,  was  a 
scene  of  much  confusion,  and,  although  Mr.  Webster,  General  Lafayette, 
and  some  other  persons  gave  toasts,  very  little  was  heard  of  what  they  said. 

1  I  was  present  (then  a  boy),  in  the  be  called  the  quantity  of  his  voice.  He 
outskirts  of  that  vast  audience,  and  well  had  an  unusual  capacity  of  chest  and 
remember  that,  when  order  was  re-  vocal  organs,  and  hence  his  voice  was 
stored,  after  the  confusion  described  one  of  extraordinary  volume.  It  was, 
by  Mr.  Ticknor,  Mr.  Webster's  clarion  moreover,  so  entirely  under  his  control, 
voice  was  distinctly  heard  at  the  spot  when  his  vocal  organs  were  in  full  play, 
where  I  stood.  His  voice,  in  public  that  it  never  broke,  however  high  it 
speaking,  was  a  very  peculiar  one.  might  rise  in  the  scale  of  its  natural 
Whether  speaking  in  the  open  air,  or  compass,  or  whatever  might  be  the 
under  a  roof,  he  could  make  himself  state  of  his  emotions.  At  the  same 
heard  to  a  great  distance,  apparently  time,  there  was  a  peculiarity  about  his 
without  much  effort,  and  without  being  organs  of  speech  that  I  have  heard  him 
unpleasantly  loud  to  those  who  were  describe  as  a  momentary  paralysis.  It 
near  him.  This  was  partly  due  to  the  sometimes  happened  to  him,  on  rising  to 
quality  of  his  voice,  which  was  naturally  speak  suddenly,  that  they  utterly  re- 
pitched  at  a  high  key,  but  which  was  fused  to  perform  their  office  until  moist- 
tempered  by  such  a  richness  of  tone  ened  by  a  slight  draught  of  water.  As 
that  it  was  never  in  the  smallest  degree  soon  as  this  was  done,  the  inability 
shrill.  It  was  due  also  to  what  might  vanished,  and  did  not  return  upon  him. 


250  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XI. 

In  the  evening  there  was  a  grand  reception  at  Mr.  Webster's,  in  Summer 
Street,  Colonel  Thorndike,  who  occupied  the  adjoining  house,  kindly  cutting 
a  door  to  connect  Mr.  Webster's  house  and  his  own,  so  that  the  crowd  might 
find  room.  It  was  not  like  the  reception  immediately  after  his  address  at 
Plymouth,  when  the  spontaneousness  with  which  people  gathered  round 
him,  and  his  freedom  from  all  care  and  responsibility,  filled  him  with  such 
a  natural  and  beautiful  excitement.  He  was  on  this  occasion  the  host, 
dignified  and  agreeable,  but  nothing  more. 

"  The  address  was  immediately  published.  He  placed  it  at  the  dispo 
sition  of  the  Bunker-Hill  Monument  Association,  and  I  sold  the  copyright 
to  Hilliard  &  Gray  for  three  hundred  dollars.  He  desired  me,  as  he  was 
going  directly  to  Niagara  with  Mrs.  Webster,  Judge  and  Mrs.  Story,  and 
others,  to  superintend  the  publication.  The  day  before  he  went  away,  he 
came  to  see  me  at  my  house,  about  a  passage  he  wanted  to  alter ;  he  took 
the  proof-sheet,  and  went  to  work,  but  did  not  satisfy  himself  with  what 
he  wrote.  He  grew  very  impatient ;  he  thought  he  could  do  better  by  dic 
tating  ;  and  walked  about  the  room  uneasily,  reading  the  proof-sheet  and  his 
changes  over  and  over  again,  dictating  new  matter,  which  satisfied  him  no 
better.  At  last  I  suggested  something  as  a  substitute,  and  he  desired  me 
to  put  it  in  writing,  throwing  himself  upon  the  sofa  in  a  sort  of  despair.  I 
did  as  he  desired.  It  took  perhaps  five  minutes,  and,  when  I  turned  round 
to  read  what  I  had  written,  I  found  him  fast  asleep  ;  a  change  not  surpris 
ing  in  him,  for  he  could,  almost  at  any  time,  dismiss  any  subject,  however 
exciting,  and  compose  himself  to  sleep.  When  I  waked  him,  he  seemed 
much  relieved  to  find  the  matter  arranged ;  and  I  did  not  see  him  again 
till  he  returned  from  Niagara,  long  before  which  time  the  country  was 
ringing  with  the  power  of  the  oration.  From  Worcester,  however,  he 
wrote  me  a  note,  still  troubled  about  words  and  phrases." 1 

Mr.  Fletcher  "Webster  has  related  an  amusing  anecdote  of 
the  place  where  the  first  Bunker-Hill  Oration  was  chiefly  com 
posed  before  it  was  committed  to  paper.  By  an  extract  from 
Mr.  Webster's  Autobiography,  contained  in  a  previous  chapter 
of  this  volume,  the  reader  has  learned  that  he  was  much  in  the 
habit  of  preparing  formal  speeches  in  the  solitudes  of  Nature. 
It  seems  that  the  celebrated  passage,  in  which  he  addressed  the 
surviving  veterans  of  Bunker  Hill,  was  first  heard  by  the  trout 
in  Marshpee  Brook.  Mr.  Fletcher  Webster  says  : 

"  The  Marshpee  River  flows  from  a  large  lake,  called  Wakeby  Pond, 
in  Barnstable  County,  into  the  ocean  on  the  southeast  coast  of  Massa- 

1  The  passage  which  troubled  him  credit  enough  to  Prescott,  and,  even  aa 

was  that  relating  to  the    position  of  it  was  altered  and  printed,  it  did  not 

Colonel  Prescott  in  the  battle.     As  he  wholly  satisfy  some  persons,  who  were 

originally  spoke  it,    he    did    not  give  supposed  to  know  much  about  the  battle. 


1825.]  FIRST  BUNKER-HILL  ADDRESS.  251 

cliusetts.  It  is  a  short  and  rapid  stream,  running  in  a  deep  valley,  or 
rather  ravine,  with  high,  precipitous  sides,  covered  with  a  thick  growth 
of  small  pines,  and  various  kinds  of  brushwood  and  shrubs. 

"  The  only  method  of  fishing  it,  is  by  wading  along  the  middle,  and 
throwing  under  the  banks  on  either  side,  it  being  unapproachable  other 
wise,  owing  to  the  trees  and  underbrush. 

"  It  was,  as  he  states  in  his  Autobiography,  while  middle-deep  in  this 
stream,  that  Mr.  Webster  composed  a  great  portion  of  his  first  Bunker- 
Hill  Address.  He  had  taken  along  with  him  that  well-known  angler, 
John  Denison,  usually  called  John  Trout,  and  myself.  I  followed  him 
along  the  stream,  fishing  the  holes  and  bends  which  he  left  for  me  ;  but, 
after  a  while,  I  began  to  notice  that  he  was  not  so  attentive  to  his  sport, 
or  so  earnest  as  usual. 

"  He  would  let  his  line  run  carelessly  down  the  stream,  or  hold  his  rod 
still  while  his  hook  was  not  even  touching  the  water ;  omitted  trying  the 
best  places  under  the  projecting  roots  of  the  pines  ;  and  seemed,  indeed, 
quite  abstracted  and  uninterested  in  his  amusement. 

"  This,  of  course,  caused  me  a  good  deal  of  wonder,  and,  after  calling 
his  attention  once  or  twice  to  his  hook  hanging  on  a  twig,  or  caught  in 
the  long  grass  of  the  river,  and  finding  that,  after  a  moment's  attention, 
he  relapsed  again  into  his  indifference,  I  quietly  walked  up  near  him,  and 
watched.  He  seemed  to  be  gazing  at  the  overhanging  trees,  and  presently 
advancing  one  foot,  and  extending  his  right  hand,  he  commenced  to 
speak  :  '  Venerable  men,'  etc.,  etc.  He  afterward  frequently  referred  to 
this  circumstance,  as  he  does  in  the  above  letter."  l 

From  a  brief  note  now  before  me,  addressed  by  Mr.  Web 
ster  to  Mr.  Ticknor,  on  the  day  on  which,  he  completed  the 
writing  of  this  address,  it  appears  that  he  was  not  well  satisfied 
with  it,  and  quite  misjudged  the  effect  that  it  was  likely  to 
produce : 

"  I  did  the  deed  this  morning,  i.  e.,  I  finished  my  speech ;  and  I  am 
pretty  well  persuaded  it  is  a  speech  that  will  finish  me,  as  far  as  reputa 
tion  is  concerned.  There  is  no  more  tone  in  it  than  in  the  weather  in 
which  it  has  been  written ;  it  is  '  perpetual  dissolution  and  thaw.' " 

It  would  be  a  work  of  supererogation  if  I  were  to  enter 
upon  extended  criticisms  of  Mr.  Webster's  productions,  as  they 
successively  arise  in  the  course  of  his  history  ;  and  certainly  it 
is  unnecessary  for  me  to  endeavor  to  guide  the  judgment  or 
instruct  the  taste  of  the  reader  in  respect  to  this  one.  He  him 
self,  as  perhaps  I  have  already  said,  was  always  inclined  to 

1  Correspondence,  ii.,  257,  note. 


252  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XI. 

regard  the  Plymouth  Discourse  as  the  best  of  his  efforts  of  this 
class.  In  point  of  breadth,  and  of  the  reach  to  which  he  car 
ried  the  subject,  and  in  the  massiveness  of  its  colossal  propor 
tions,  the  Plymouth  Discourse  may  stand  at  the  head  of  his 
orations.  But  the  thrilling  eloquence  of  the  address  to  the  old 
soldiers  of  Bunker  Hill,  and  of  the  apostrophe  to  Warren,  and 
the  superb  reservation  of  eulogy  with  which  he  spoke  of  and  to 
General  Lafayette — "  reluctant  to  grant  our  highest  and  last 
honors  to  the  living,  honors  we  would  gladly  hold  yet  back 
from  the  little  remnant  of  the  immortal  band  " — were  perhaps 
unequalled,  surely  never  surpassed  by  him  on  any  other  occa 
sion.  The  consummate  skill  of  composition  and  delivery,  which 
afterward  gave  to  a  supposititious  speech  of  John  Adams  all 
the  effect  of  a  real  utterance  of  that  patriot,  in  the  eulogy  at 
Faneuil  Hall,  was  an  exhibition  of  power  of  quite  another 
kind. 

The  illustrations  given  by  Mr.  Ticknor  of  Mr.  "Webster's 
literary  care  in  respect  to  this  class  of  his  public  efforts  call  for 
some  further  remark  concerning  his  habits  in  this  respect.  He 
would  sometimes  make  an  important  speech  in  Congress  or  in 
court,  and  pay  no  attention  to  the  dress  in  which  it  might  be 
laid  before  the  world ;  insomuch  that  his  friends,  as  we  have 
seen,  often  considered  him  careless  about  his  reputation  as  a 
speaker.  But,  with  these  formal  orations,  which  he  regarded 
as  coming  within  the  domain  of  scholarship,  and  on  which  he 
was  conscious  that  his  fame  as  an  orator  was,  in  part,  to  rest 
with  present  and  future  generations,  he  was  extremely  careful, 
as  they  were  passing  through  the  press.  He  would  correct 
them  with  a  severity  of  taste  that  was  far  more  rigorous  than 
any  standard  that  the  public  was  likely  to  apply  to  them  ;  and, 
when  he  failed  to  satisfy  himself,  he  would  resort  to  the  aid  of 
others.  The  late  Mr.  Thomas  Kemper  Davis,  a  son  of  one  of 
his  intimate  friends,  and  a  good  scholar  himself,  was  a  student- 
at-law,  in  Mr.  Webster's  office,  at  the  time  when  he  delivered 
his  eulogy  on  Adams  and  Jefferson.  He  has  told  me  that,  on 
the  morning  after  its  delivery,  Mr.  Webster  entered  the  office, 
and  threw  down  the  manuscript  before  him,  with  the  request : 
"  There,  Tom,  please  to  take  that  discourse,  and  weed  out  the 
Latin  words."  Such  was  his  love  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  element 


1825.]  CARE   OF  HIS  STYLE.  253 

in  our  language,  that  lie  preferred  to  avoid  a  word  of  Latin 
origin,  if  he  could  do  so  without  impoverishing  his  style.  At 
the  same  time,  he  was  a  Latin  scholar,  and  a  constant  reader 
of  the  Latin  classics. 

There  are  those  who  may  be  inclined  to  regard  this  trouble 
about  words  and  phrases  as  something  a  little  beneath  a  great 
statesman  ;  and,  perhaps,  as  evincing  less  of  the  practical,  and 
of  what  is  sometimes  aifectedly  called  the  "  business  "  charac 
ter  of  mind,  than  has  been  displayed  by  other  eminent  men, 
who  have  taken,  or  have  been  supposed  to  take,  no  thought  of 
such  refinements.  But  there  are  several  obvious  answers  to 
this  kind  of  cavil,  at  least  when  it  is  applied  to  Mr.  Webster. 
In  the  first  place,  if  a  thing  is  to  be  done,  whoever  is  to  do  it, 
it  is  better  to  have  it  done  well  than  ill,  in  point  of  manner  as 
well  as  of  substance.  In  the  next  place,  a  man  who  occupies  a 
very  conspicuous  public  position,  is  bound  to  look  farther  than 
a  merely  selfish  regard  for  his  own  reputation  might  lead  him. 
The  effect  of  his  example  on  the  culture  of  his  time  and  country 
is  to  be  considered,  in  matters  of  style,  as  well  as  in  the 
sentiments  that  he  speaks  or  writes.  Public  speaking,  in  this 
country,  has  never  been  so  pure  and  correct  as  to  make  it 
unimportant  whether  the  best  models  are  or  are  not  found 
in  the  performances  of  those  who  are  regarded  as  the  ablest 
thinkers  and  most  eloquent  speakers  of  their  time.  In  the 
third  place,  demonstrative  oratory,  in  a  cultivated  age,  is  one 
of  the  departments  of  letters  in  which  a  correct  and  carefully- 
polished  style,  or  the  want  of  it,  is  especially  conspicuous. 
Finally,  in  the  case  of  Mr.  "Webster,  no  one,  who  is  conversant 
with  what  he  could  do  and  did,  as  a  statesman,  a  legislator, 
and  a  lawyer,  will  be  inclined  to  rate  his  business  capacities 
the  lower,  because  he  was  nice  and  long  in  the  correction  of 
discourses  that  were  to  live  after  him,  and  to  be  read  with 
delight  by  the  lettered  and  the  unlettered  in  periods  very 
remote  from  his  own.  Instead  of  contracting,  it  should  en 
large  our  estimate  of  his  powers,  to  know  that,  while  he  was 
capable  of  moving,  or  convincing,  or  instructing  men  to  a 
degree  in  which  he  was  not  excelled,  certainly,  by  any  of 
his  contemporaries,  he  was  not  indifferent  to  the  language 
in  which  he  clothed  his  thoughts.  One  great  secret  of 


254  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XI. 

the  directness  with,  which  he  reached  the  minds  of  men  lay  in 
the  simplicity  and  purity  of  his  style ;  a  simplicity  that  was 
the  result  of  the  clearness  and  vigor  of  his  thought,  and  a 
purity  that  was  the  result  of  a  highly-cultivated  and  disci 
plined  taste. 

Mr.  Ticknor  observes  that,  long  before  Mr.  Webster's  re 
turn  from  Niagara,  the  country  was  ringing  with  the  power  of 
the  Bunker-Hill  Oration.  It  was  no  less  rapidly  circulated  on 
the  Continent  of  Europe.  General  Lafayette  wrote  to  Mr. 
Webster  from  La  Grange  :  "  Your  Bunker  Hill  has  been 
translated  in  French  and  other  languages,  to  the  very  great 
profit  of  European  readers.  My  gallant  and  eloquent  friend, 
Foy,  has  lived  long  enough  to  enjoy  it." l 

The  journey  to  Niagara,  mentioned  by  Mr.  Ticknor,  oc 
cupied  the  remaining  portion  of  June  and  nearly  the  whole  of 
July.  The  party  consisted  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Webster,  Judge 
and  Mrs.  Story,  and  Miss  Buckminster,  afterward  Mrs.  Lee. 
Forty-five  years  ago,  when  this  tour  was  undertaken,  there 
was,  of  course,  not  a  single  mile  of  railway  between  Boston 
and  Niagara.  Mr.  Webster  and  his  friends  travelled  in  the 
coaches  of  that  period,  and  in  the  passenger-boats  of  the  Erie 
Canal,  which,  saving  their  slowness,  were  not  a  disagreeable 
mode  of  locomotion.  At  Albany,  Mr.  Webster  and  Judge 
Story  were  invited  to  meet  General  Lafayette  at  a  public 
dinner,  given  to  him  in  the  capitol ;  and,  in  the  evening,  the 
whole  party  attended  the  theatre,  where  the  General  was  pres 
ent,  and  remained  until  he  had  taken  his  leave  to  go  on  board 
a  steamer,  and  descend  the  river.2 

The  letters  of  Mr.  Webster,  written  from  Niagara  to  his 
friends  at  home,  are  nearly  all  embraced  in  the  first  volume  of 
his  printed  correspondence.  They  were  chiefly  addressed  to 
Mrs.  George  Blake,  to  whom  he  endeavored  to  impart  as 
vivid  a  description  of  that  sublime  spectacle  as  words  can 
convey.  It  was  the  first  time  he  ever  looked  upon  it.  The 
following  passage,  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Mrs.  Blake,  may  be 
quoted  here,  as  one  of  the  best  specimens  of  his  manner  of 
describing  a  scene  which  has  awakened  similar  emotions  in 
all  thoughtful  minds  that  have  beheld  it,  while  it  has  per- 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  400.  2  Life  of  Judge  Story,  i.,  455. 


1825.J  VISIT  TO  NIAGARA.  255 

haps  rarely  touched  such  a  power  of  expressing  the  feelings 
that  it  excites  : 1 

"  We  went  this  afternoon  a  little  lower  down  the  river  than  the  upper 
staircase,  almost,  indeed,  down  to  the  ferry,  and,  getting  out  on  a  rock,  in 
the  edge  of  the  river,  we  thought  the  view  of  the  whole  falls  the  best  we 
had  obtained.  If,  at  the  bottom  of  the  staircase,  instead  of  descending 
farther,  we  choose  to.  turn  to  the  right,  and  go  up  the  stream,  we  soon  get 
to  the  foot  of  the  fall,  and  approach  the  edge  of  the  falling  mass.  It  is 
easy  to  go  in  behind  for  a  little  distance  between  the  falling  water  and  the 
rock  over  which  it  is  precipitated ;  this  cannot  be  done,  however,  without 
being  entirely  wet.  From  within  this  cavern  there  issues  a  wind,  occa 
sionally  very  strong,  and  bringing  with  it  such  showers  and  torrents  of 
spray,  that  we  are  soon  as  wet  as  if  we  had  come  over  the  Falls  with  the 
water.  As  near  to  the  fall,  in  this  place,  as  you  can  well  come,  is  perhaps 
the  spot  on  which  the  mind  is  most  deeply  impressed  with  the  whole 
scene.  Over  our  heads  hangs  a  fearful  rock,  projecting  out  like  an  unsup 
ported  piazza.  Before  us  is  a  hurly-burly  of  waters,  too  deep  to  be 
fathomed,  too  irregular  to  be  described,  shrouded  in  too  much  mist  to 
be  clearly  seen.  Water,  vapor,  foam,  and  the  atmosphere,  are  all  mixed  up 
together  in  sublime  confusion.  By  our  side,  down  comes  this  world  of 
green  and  white  waters,  and  pours  into  the  invisible  abyss.  A  steady,  un 
varying,  low-toned  roar  thunders  incessantly  upon  our  ears ;  as  we  look 
up,  we  think  some  sudden  disaster  has  opened  the  seas,  and  that  all  their 
floods  are  coming  down  upon  us  at  once ;  but  we  soon  recollect  that  what 
we  see  is  not  a  sudden  or  violent  exhibition,  but  the  permanent  and  uni 
form  character  of  the  object  which  we  contemplate.  There  the  grand 
spectacle  has  stood  for  centuries,  from  the  creation  even,  as  far  as  we 
know,  without  change.  From  the  beginning  it  has  shaken,  as  it  now 
does,  the  earth  and  the  air;  and  its  unvarying  thunder  existed  before 
there  were  human  ears  to  hear  it.  Reflections  like  these,  on  the  duration 
and  permanency  of  this  grand  object,  naturally  arise,  and  contribute  much 
to  the  deep  feeling  which  the  whole  scene  produces.  We  cannot  help 
being  struck  with  a  sense  of  the  insignificance  of  man  and  all  his  works 
compared  with  what  is  before  us  : 

'  Lo !  where  it  comes  like  an  eternity, 
As  if  to  sweep  down  all  things  in  its  track ! ' "  2 

After  his  return  from  Niagara,  Mr.  Webster  passed  the 
remainder  of  the  summer  and  a  portion  of  the  autumn  (1825) 
at  Sandwich,  on  Cape  Cod. 

1  In  the  Life  of  Judge  Story  is  a    its  incidents  more  minutely  than  those 
series  of  very  interesting  letters,  written    of  Mr.  Webster, 
by  him  on  this  journey,  which  describe          2  Correspondence,  i.,  389. 


256  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 


CHAPTEK    XII. 

1825-1826. 

CORRESPONDENCE AMENDMENT   OF   THE 'JUDICIAL  SYSTEM SPEECH 

ON   THE   CONGRESS   OF     PANAMA EULOGY   ON    ADAMS    AND   JEF 
FERSON — REFLECTED   TO   CONGRESS. 

ME.  WEBSTER  arrived  in  Washington,  to  attend  the  first 
session  of  the  Nineteenth  Congress,  before  the  1st  of 
December,  1825,  with  a  great  stock  of  health  and  strength, 
which  he  had  gained  at  Magara  and  at  Sandwich.  Mrs.  Web 
ster  and  the  children,  Daniel,  Jnlia,  and  Edward,  were  all  with 
him.  Before  entering  upon  the  business  of  the  session,  I  quote 
some  portions  of  his  correspondence,  extending  through  this 
winter,  and  I  add  to  it  a  letter  written  by  Mrs.  Webster,  because 
it  will  give  my  readers  a  pleasing  impression  of  that  cultivated 
and  gentle  lady,  and  because  it  is  the  only  production  of  her 
pen  among  the  papers  before  me.1 

[MRS.    WEBSTER   TO   MRS.    TICKNOR.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  December  24, 1825. 

"  I  am  unwilling  a  single  day  should  pass,  my  dear  Mrs.  Ticknor,  with 
out  telling  you  how  much  I  feel  indebted  by  the  kind  interest  you  take  in 
our  welfare.  It  is  indeed  pleasant  to  feel  assured  that,  though  absent,  we 
are  still  remembered,  and  I  have  the  great  happiness  of  telling  you  we  are 
all  well.  We  had  a  very  good  journey  ;  having  neither  heroes  nor  heroines, 
no  incident  worth  relating  occurred.  Julia  took  a  severe  cold  in  the  re 
nowned  city  of  New  York,  which,  added  to  the  fatigue  of  the  journey, 

1  The  letters  of  Mrs.  Webster,  quoted  first  volume  of  Mr.  Webster's  con-G 
in  a  previous  chapter,  were  printed  in  the  spondence. 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  257 

made  her  look  quite  ill.  I  was  very  unhappy  for  a  time ;  but  she  soon  began 
to  mend,  and  is  now  very  well.  Mr.  Webster  is  in  very  good  health.  He 
got  a  headache  yesterday  in  consequence  of  his  exertions  to  put  out  the 
fire  which  was  discovered  in  the  library  of  the  capitol  the  night  before. 
As  the  newspapers,  I  see,  made  'honorable'  mention  of  him,  together  with 
the  fire,  I  need  say  little  about  it. 

"  Washington  is  the  same  as  when  you  were  here.  I  see  very  little  or 
indeed  no  change.  There  are,  however,  some  changes  in  the  inhabitants, 
and  some  have  changed  places — all  else  appears  precisely  the  same. 

"  Mrs.  Adams  looks  well  in  her  new  station,  and  the  President  now  and 
then  sheds  a  tear,  which  looks  lenign.1  Things  are  under  much  better 
regulation  in  the  palace  than  formerly.  There  is  a  little  of  Northern  com 
fort.  Instead  of  shivering  and  shaking  in  that  immense  cold  saloon,  we 
were  shown  into  a  good,  warm  parlor,  with  a  nice  little  white  damsel  to 
take  care  of  our  coats,  etc.  I  said  there  were  no  changes  in  the  appearance 
of  things  here ;  there  have  been  several  new  houses,  which  ought  not  to  be 
passed  over,  but  the  distances  are  so  immense  they  are  hardly  perceptible. 
The  furniture  at  the  palace  below-stairs  is  precisely  as  it  was.  I  believe 
all  the  appropriations  have  been  confined  to  the  second  story.  There  are 
many  things  below  that  want  renewing.  I  wish  I  could  send  you  an  in 
ventory  of  the  furniture  as  it  was  when  Mrs.  Adams  came  into  possession 
— it's  a  curiosity. 

"  Mr.  Wallenstein  I  do  not  see  so  often  as  I  should  like  to.  His  visits 
unfortunately  happen,  most  of  them,  when  I  am  out.  I  saw  him,  however, 
yesterday  and  the  evening  before ;  he  was  in  fine  spirits,  and  very  amusing 
with  his  remarks  upon  the  ladies.  I  shall  have  great  pleasure  in  present 
ing  him  your  kind  remembrances.  My  husband,  I  am  sure,  will  be  very 
happy  in  giving  you  his  opinion  of  the  President's  message,  or  any  thing 
else  which  may  serve  as  an  apology  for  writing  you.  I  have  much  duty  to 
perform  in  the  way  of  visits  this  morning,  which  I  must  beg  you  will  accept 
as  an  apology  for  this  hasty  letter.  Pray  remember  me  very  affectionately 
to  your  husband,  and  give  much  love  and  a  kiss  to  little  Anna.  And 
believe  me  very  truly  and  affectionately  yours, 

"  G.  WEBSTER." 


[MB.  WEBSTER  TO  MR.  TICKNOR.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  8,  1826. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  It  is  a  poor  return  for  your  kindness  to  remain  so 
long  dumb.  Your  letter  has  stood  up  here  before  me  these  three  weeks, 
like  another  conscience,  giving  me  a  rebuke  ever  and  anon.  I  had  thought 
that  for  the  first  month  of  the  session  I  should  have  much  leisure,  and  had 
meditated  divers  great  things.  But  I  have  found  some  small  matter  or 

1  Mr.  Adams  was  subject  to  an  affec^     occasionally  had  the  appearance  of  weep- 
tion  of  the  lachrymal  duct,  and  hence  he    ing. 
18 


258  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cii.  XII. 

other  forever  in  the  way.  I  stay  at  home  to-day  while  my  wife  is  gone  to 
hear  '  f  John,  Bishop  of  Charleston,'  preach  in  the  capitol,  that  I  may  have 
time  to  write  to  Mr.  Denison  (England),  and  yourself,  and  some  other 
friends  in  the  United  States. 

"Pretty  near  the  whole  of  Washington  is  reflected  in  '  Gales  and 
Seaton ; '  so  that  there  is  not  much  to  talk  about  out  of  the  newspapers. 
Mr.  Adams's  mission  to  Panama  is  opposed  in  the  Senate,  and  will  be  in 
the  House,  when  the  money  is  asked  for.  It  is  not  unlikely  it  may  be  the 
first  measure  which  shall  assemble  the  scattered  materials  of  opposition. 
But  I  entertain  no  doubt  about  the  result.  From  what  I  learn  of  the 
causes  which  led  to  Mr.  Adams's  agreement  to  the  proposal,  I  am  con 
vinced  he  acted  right ;  and,  in  addition  to  that,  the  popular  topics  lie  on 
that  side. 

"  Mr.  Clay  appears  to  get  on  very  well  in  the  discharge  of  his  duties. 
I  believe  the  whole  diplomatic  corps  entertain  much  respect  for  him,  and 
what  I  have  seen  of  his  diplomatic  correspondence  shows  great  cleverness. 

"I  am  greatly  pleased  with  your  friend  Mr.  Vaughan.1  He  has  been 
very  civil  to  me,  for  which  I  have  to  thank  you.  He  speaks  of  you  much, 
and  is  very  desirous  to  see  you.  What  has  continued  to  puzzle  him,  he 
says,  is  how  you  could  contrive,  in  so  short  a  time,  to  master  so  much 
Spanish  literature.  I  find  he  is  brother  of  Mr.  Sergeant  Vaughan,  one  of 
the  leading  lawyers  in  England,  whose  bar  speeches  Judge  Story  and  I 
have  been  reading  (like  the  rest  of  our  brethren)  any  time  these  twenty 
years.  The  Judge  will  be  pleased  with  Mr.  Vaughan  the  more,  as  he  is 
thus  collaterally  connected  with  the  law;  We  have  a  Dutch  minister  in 
the  person  of  Mr.  Huygens,  apparently  a  respectable  man ;  and  in  other 
respects  the  corps  remains  much  as  it  was. 

"In  the  way  of  private  affairs,  I  believe  you  must  rely  on  my  wife  for  a 
knowledge  of  what  little  there  is  stirring.  The  drawing-room  is  agreed 
by  all  to  have  received  great  improvement.  When  I  was  there  it  was 
absolutely  warm,  within  a  very  few  degrees,  to  the  point  of  comfort.  I 
even  saw  gentlemen  walking  in  the  great  hall  of  entrance,  with  apparent 
impunity,  without  their  great-coats  on  !  (This  is  for  Mrs.  Ticknor.)  We 
have  even  dined  at  the  White  House — a  very  good  dinner  and  a  very  good 
time.  But  not  liking  large  dinner-parties  at  all,  I  think  they  are  hardly 
better  for  having  ladies.  It  is  a  solemn  time,  when  we  are  at  a  dinner- 
table,  where  numbers  prevent  us  from  being  social,  and  politeness  forbids 
us  to  be  noisy.  On  the  whole,  however,  the  domestic  presidential  arrange 
ments  are  approved.  (For  Mrs.  Ticknor.) 

"  We  had  a  discourse  yesterday  from  Dr.  Watkyns,  of  the  Columbian 
Institute.  It  was,  I  thought,  a  very  creditable  performance,  and  will 
doubtless  be  printed. 

1  The  English  minister  at  Washing-  Wellesley,    afterward    Lord   Cowley,    at 

ton.     Mr.  Ticknor  knew  Mr.  Vaughan  in  whose  house  they  constantly  met  during 

Madrid  in   1818,  where  that  gentleman  that  summer.     He  had  recently  arrived 

was  secretary  of  embassy  to  Sir  Charles  in  Washington. 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  259 

"  When  you  see  the  Judge,  tell  him  I  am  in  a  peck  of  troubles  for  want 
of  his  promised  letter. 

"Adieu  !    Have  you  had  any  more  fires  ?    With  my  love  to  Mrs.  T., 
"  Yours  truly,  D.  W." 

[MR.  WEBSTER   TO  MR.  TICKNOR.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  March  1, 1826. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  owe  you  for  two  very  kind  letters ;  and,  although  I 
do  not  pay  the  debt,  it  is  but  fair  to  acknowledge  it.  To  begin  with 
affairs:  I  immediately  called  at  the  War  Department,  and  suggested  an 
idea  about  West  Point.1  It  was  received  not  only  kindly  but  with  much 
apparent  satisfaction  and  pleasure.  As  great  men  are  apt  to  have  short 
memories,  I  have  written  a  note  on  the  subject,  addressed  to  the  Secretary, 
which  will  go  on  file,  of  course,  and  will  recall  the  matter  to  his  mind  at 
the  proper  time.  I  already  envy  you  and  your  wife  the  pleasure  of  Catskill. 

"Our  Philadelphia  matter  remains  as  when  I  wrote  you  last ;  all  being, 
I  believe,  quiet  and  gratified. 

"  Judge  Story  was  sick  on  his  way — and  is  again  a  little  unwell  here. 
But  his  present  illness  is  only  a  little  sick  headache  ;  one  of  the  ways,  per 
haps,  in  which  the  great  enemy  influenza  makes  his  attacks.  Wallenstein 
is  mourning  according  to  law,  and  as  well  and  happy  as  a  man  can  be  who 
belongs  to  an  empire  that  has  so  suddenly  lost  a  pretty  good  head  and  got 
another  rather  doubtful  one.a  I  speak,  however,  of  those  only  in  this 
empire  whose  honors,  or  whose  bread,  depend  on  this  same  head  of  the 
empire ;  for,  as  to  the  masses,  I  suppose  they  care  not  whose  head  is  lost, 
so  it  be  not  their  own.  When  quite  a  boy  I  remember  reading  some  verses 
of  a  song,  which  had  some  sense  though  not  much  poetry.  I  have  looked 
for  them  often  since  in  vain.  Their  moral  is  as  applicable  to  emperors  as 
others,  more  striking  of  course  in  the  case  of  the  great  than  of  the  small. 
I  can  recall  only  these  few  doggerel  lines : 

" '  When  you  and  I  are  dead  and  gone, 
This  busy  world  will  still  jog  on, 
And  laugh  and  sing,  and  be  as  hearty, 
As  if  we  still  were  of  the  party.' 

1  Mr.  Ticknor  had  written  to  Mr.  if  the  Secretary  of  War  chooses  to  ask 
Webster  as  follows :  "  And  apropos  of  me  to  go  as  a  visitor,  I  should  be  glad 
this,  I  want  to  see  the  establishment  at  of  it,  because  I  can  in  this  way  get  more 
West  Point.  Thayer,  the  superintendent,  of  the  practical  details  and  information 
was  my  classmate,  and  this  makes  it  that  will  be  useful  at  Cambridge,  and  be- 
more  interesting  to  me.  In  1822,  I  was  sides  get  it  in  a  more  agreeable  way.  At 
asked  to  go  as  a  visitor ;  but  it  was  im-  any  rate,  I  think  I  shall  be  there,  whether 
possible  for  me,  and  I  declined.  Last  the  secretary  sends  me  his  compliments 
winter  Mr.  Calhoun  asked  me  again ;  but  or  not,  and  Thayer  will,  perhaps,  be  quite 
I  foresaw  what  would  be  the  situation  of  as  glad  to  see  me  as  if  I  were  an  official 
my  family,  and  again  declined.  Next  visitor." 

summer,  however,  as  far  as  I  can  now  2  This  alludes  to  the  death  of  the  Em- 
see,  we  shall  be  on  the  North  River  peror  Alexander  of  Russia,  who  was  sue- 
within  a  week  of  the  examination.  I  do  ceeded  by  his  brother  the  late  Emperor 
not  doubt  I  shall  be  present  at  it;  and  Nicholas,  in  December,  1825. 


260  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

Tliis  is  melancholy,  but  it  is  true ;  and,  if  a  dead  man  finds  any  thing,  the 
autocrat  of  all  the  Russias  will  find  it  is  true. 

"  As  to  politics,  we  have  little  stirring.  All  goes  on  smoothly  except 
the  Panama  mission ;  that  sticks  in  the  Senate.  The  incongruous  mate 
rials  of  opposition  assimilate  better  on  that  subject  than  they  are  likely  to 
on  most  others.  I  believe  the  measure  will  prevail,  however,  by  a  slight 
majority  in  the  Senate.  In  our  House  we  shall  have  a  debate  on  it,  and  I 
shall  make  a  short  speech,  for  certain  reasons,  provided  I  can  get  out  of 
court,  and  provided  better  reflection  should  not  change  my  purpose.  At 
present,  the  H.  R.  is  riding  at  anchor  on  the  Constitutional  Amendment 
question.  I  seize  the  occasion  to  go  ashore  and  dispatch  my  concerns  in 
Supreme  Court. 

"  As  to  parties,  dinners,  etc.,  we  have  enough  and  to  spare.  My  wife 
is  a  good  deal  dissipated.  So  is  Mrs.  Blake.  The  ball  of  the  22d  was  a 
grand  affair.  But  I  learn  that  Mrs.  "Webster  intends  to  write  a  dispatch 
soon  to  Mrs.  Ticknor,  which  will,  of  course,  discuss  all  these  questions  at 
large. 

"  And  now  of  Governor  Cass.1  Lewis  Cass  is  a  native  of  Exeter,  New 
Hampshire.  His  father  was  an  officer  in  our  army,  long  ago.  Lewis  was 
educated  at  Exeter  '  in  my  time,'  and  went  with  his  father  to  Ohio  about  1798 
or  1800.  He  there  read  and  practised  law — took  a  military  command  at  the 
commencement  of  the  late  war,  and,  on  the  peace,  was  appointed  Governor 
of  Michigan.  He  is  what  we  call  in  New  England  a  clever  fellow,  good- 
natured,  kind-hearted,  amiable,  and  obliging.  His  education  was  imper 
fect  ;  but  he  seems  to  have  done  something  for  himself  in  the  Western 
wilds.  He  has  been  here  this  winter,  and  I  have  brightened  old  chains 
with  him.  He  is  of  the  age  of  Saltonstall,2  who  was  with  him  at  Exeter, 
equally  good-humored,  more  talkative,  and  twice  as  fat.  In  Ohio  he  was 
always  found,  I  am  told,  on  the  side  of  sound  principles.  He  is  probably 
not  overlearned  in  Indian  languages — perhaps  is  superficial — but  I  confess 
I  was  astonished  to  find  he  knew  so  much.  But  I  ought  to  say  that  I  am 
a  total  unbeliever  in  the  new  doctrines  about  the  Indian  languages.  I 
believe  them  to  be  the  rudest  forms  of  speech ;  and  I  believe  there  is  as 
little  in  the  languages  of  the  tribes  as  in  their  laws,  manners,  and  cus 
toms,  worth  studying  or  worth  knowing.  All  this  is  heresy,  I  know,  but 
so  I  think. 

"  Adieu,  my  dear  sir.  Pray  remember  me  most  sincerely  to  Mrs.  Ticknor. 
I  go  seldom  to  Williamson's.  It  is  dreary  and  solitary.  Mrs.  Webster 
joins  me  in  her  remembrances,  and  will  shortly  have  the  pleasure  of 
writing  to  Mrs.  Ticknor. 

"  Adieu. — Yours  always  most  truly, 

"  D.  W." 

Among  the  topics  that  required  Mr.  Webster's  immediate 

1  Mr.  Ticknor  had  inquired  about  2  The  late  Hon.  Leverett  Saltonstall, 
him.  of  Salem. 


1826.]  JUDICIAL  SYSTEM.  261 

attention  at  this  session,  the  judiciary  system  was  the  first.  In 
the  last  preceding  Congress,  he  had  been  able  to  do  nothing 
more  on  this  subject  than  to  prevent  the  adoption  of  measures 
which  he  regarded  as  inexpedient  and  injurious.  It  now  be 
came  necessary  for  him  to  introduce  a  bill  that  should  amend 
the  judicial  system,  as  it  then  existed,  in  several  very  important 
respects.  The  number  of  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  was 
then  seven.  They  were  allotted  to  seven  circuits,  six  of  which 
embraced  the  Atlantic  States.  The  seventh  circuit  consisted  of 
the  States  of  Kentucky,  Ohio,  and  Tennessee.  All  the  other 
Western  and  Southwestern  States  had  only  District  Courts,  ex 
ercising  the  powers  of  Circuit  Courts.  Great  complaints  came 
from  these  States,  while  upon  the  Atlantic  seaboard  there  was 
no  pressing  necessity  for  any  change.  Mr.  Webster  desired  to 
frame  his  measure  so  as  to  meet  the  exigencies  arising  from  the 
great  expansion  of  the  country,  with  as  little  disturbance  as 
possible  to  the  general  principles  on  which  the  judicial  system 
had  been  long  conducted.  In  doing  this  he  proceeded  in  a 
mode  that  was  one  of  his  most  remarkable  characteristics.  He 
was  not  at  all  accustomed,  in  important  public  affairs  requiring 
the  adjustment  of  very  wide  relations,  to  set  forth  with  previ 
ously-fixed  opinions,  unless  some  constitutional  principle  was 
involved ;  nor  did  he,  even  in  such  cases,  adopt  his  opinions 
hastily.  One  of  his  most  marked  intellectual  traits  was  his 
deliberate  habit  of  mind  and  action.  He  omitted  no  source 
or  opportunity  of  information  ;  he  conversed  with  every  well- 
informed  person  who  had  any  idea  upon  the  subject  to  impart ; 
he  weighed  every  thing ;  he  digested  the  whole  with  the  results 
of  his  own  observation,  experience,  and  reflection.  When  he 
spoke,  therefore,  as  he  could  speak,  with  a  clearness  and  precis 
ion  that  were  generally  felt  to  be  unequalled,  it  was  found  that 
his  opinions  were  wise  because  they  were  formed  with  so  much 
care,  and  with  such  comprehensive  attention  to  the  opinions  of 
others.  Mr.  Calhoun  once  said  that  he  had  never  seen  any 
man  who  gave  the  views  of  an  opponent  so  fairly  as  Mr.  Web 
ster  was  in  the  habit  of  stating  an  argument  to  which  he  in 
tended  to  reply,  and  that  he  often  stated  the  position  of  an 
adversary  better  than  the  adversary  himself  could  have  given 
it.  This  predominance  of  intellect  over  the  mere  fevers  of 


262  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

jealous  anxiety  for  display — this  superiority  to  the  weak  trick 
ery  of  misrepresentation — gave  Mr.  Webster,  in  debate,  a  very 
uncommon  power.  Men  felt  that,  if  what  he  said  admitted  of 
an  answer,  that  answer  must  be  made  with  great  care;  that  one 
who  had  manifestly  looked  with  equal  attention  on  all  sides  of 
a  subject  was  not  likely  to  be  self-deceived,  or  to  aim  at  de 
ceiving  others  ;  and  they  yielded  their  convictions  to  his  argu 
ments,  because  conviction  is  an  intellectual  process,  that  is 
largely  influenced  by  the  feeling  that  he  who  seeks  to  pro 
duce  it  is  above  the  use  of  sophistry  and  incapable  of  unfair 
ness. 

He  had  never  more  need  of  these  peculiar  powers  than  he 
had  in  conducting  this  judiciary  bill  through  the  House  of 
Representatives  in  the  winter  of  1825-'26.  It  was  not  a  meas 
ure  of  a  party  character ;  and,  if  it  had  been,  he  had  no  special 
party  to  rely  on.  It  was  a  measure  affecting  the  working  of 
the  judicial  department  of  the  Government,  which,  as  originally 
organized,  the  country  had  outgrown.  There  were  serious  dis 
satisfactions  to  be  encountered,  and  there  was  a  great  conflict 
of  opinions  respecting  the  proper  mode  of  meeting  them.  On 
the  one  hand,  the  members  of  the  Supreme  Court  itself,  consist 
ing  of  Marshall,  "Washington,  Todd,  Johnson,  Story,  Duval,  and 
Thompson,  judges  long  accustomed  to  act  together,  and  thus 
far  generally  harmonizing  in  their  views  of  the  constitutional 
questions  arising  in  the  exercise  of  their  appellate  functions,  were 
naturally  solicitous  about  the  effect  of  any  considerable  increase 
of  their  numbers.  Such  an  increase,  however,  was  unavoidable, 
unless  the  judges  were  to  be  separated  from  the  performance 
of  circuit  duties.  The  new  measure,  therefore  was  to  be  car 
ried  in  a  manner  to  conciliate  the  court,  or,  at  all  events,  so  as 
to  prevent  a  feeling  that  the  expansion  of  the  system  (in  order 
to  meet  the  wants  of  the  great  West)  was  not  destined  to  inju 
riously  affect  the  function  of  the  Supreme  Court  as  the  con 
servative  balance-wheel  of  the  Constitution.  The  measure  was 
to  be  carried,  too,  through  a  House  of  Representatives,  where 
there  were  leading  and  important  men,  who  entertained  a  good 
deal  of  jealousy  concerning  the  power  of  the  court  to  declare 
State  laws  unconstitutional,  and  who  desired  to  restrict  the 
exercise  of  that  power  by  a  statute  provision  that  would  re- 


1826.]  JUDICIAL  SYSTEM.  263 

quire  the  concurrence  of  a  majority  of  all  the  members  of  the 
court.  There  were  others  who  objected  to  an  increase  of  the 
number  of  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  still  others 
who  wished  to  make  it  merely  a  court  in  lane,  while  many 
were  opposed  to  removing  them  from  all  connection  with  the 
circuit  business.  To  reconcile  these  discordant  views,  and  to 
present  a  bill  that  would  afford  a  uniform  system  to  the  whole 
Union,  Mr.  "Webster  yielded  to  the  preference  of  his  committee 
for  an  addition  of  three  judges  instead  of  two,  the  number 
which  he  preferred  ;  provided  that  six  of  the  ten  judges  should 
be  a  quorum  for  the  transaction  of  business  in  the  Supreme 
Court;  distributed  the  judges  to  ten  circuits,  comprehending 
all  the  States  in  the  Union,  and  established  a  Circuit  Court 
for  each  of  them.  In  this  shape  the  bill  was  brought  before 
the  House  on  the  22d  of  December,  1825.  The  discussion  on 
it  continued  at  intervals  for  a  month.  The  principal  speeches 
made  by  Mr.  Webster,  in  opening  and  closing  the  discussion, 
are  to  be  found  in  the  third  volume  of  his  Works.  They 
contain  opinions  upon  this  subject  which  I  believe  he  always 
continued  to  hold,  especially  those  which  relate  to  the  expe 
diency  of  having  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  perform 
circuit  duties.  The  bill,  as  he  advocated  it,  finally  passed 
the  House,  on  the  25th  of  January,  1826,  and  was  sent  to  the 
Senate. 

But  in  that  body  there  was  no  one  who  favored  it  and  who 
had  the  requisite  skill  and  influence  to  conduct  it  to  a  success 
ful  vote,  in  an  unimpaired  condition.  The  Western  members 
differed  about  the  distribution  of  the  circuits ;  and,  from  this 
and  a  real  unwillingness  to  give  the  Administration  the  appoint 
ment  of  three  new  judges,  the  bill  came  back  to  the  House  so 
encumbered  with  amendments,  that  it  was  finally  lost  by  the 
disagreement  of  the  two  bodies.  Writing  to  Judge  Story  in 
May,  while  the  bill  still  hung  in  uncertainty  in  the  Senate, 
Mr.  Webster  said :  "If  the  bill  passes,  well ;  if  not,  we  have 
made  a  fair  offer,  and  the  court  will  remain  at  seven  some  years 
longer." 1 

That  this  measure  should  have  been  lost  for  want  of  West 
ern  support,  is  truly  surprising.  What  was  thought  of  it  by 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  405. 


264:  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

one  of  the  wisest  men  in  New  England,  may  be  seen  from  the 
following  letter : 

[FKOM  ME.  JEKEMIAH  MASON.] 

"  PORTSMOUTH,  February  4, 1826. 

"Mr  DEAR  SIR  :  I  congratulate  you  on  the  success  of  your  judiciary 
bill.  You  have  certainly  carried  it  through  your  House  handsomely,  and 
had  in  the  end  a  triumphant  majority.  The  plan  for  circuit  judges  might 
possibly  have  better  suited  certain  personal  views,  but,  if  such  a  plan  had 
succeeded,  there  are  ten  chances  to  one  all  such  views  would,  in  the  end, 
have  been  disappointed.  On  a  measure  of  this  importance,  such  consid 
erations  ought  to  have  no  manner  of  influence.  I  was  amused  with  Mr. 

B 's  motion,  intended,  I  suppose,  for  the  special  benefit  of . 

The  increased  number  of  judges  must,  I  think,  bring  additional  strength 
and  security  to  the  Supreme  Court,  where  more  is  wanted,  in  the  determi 
nation  of  constitutional  questions.  By  dividing  it  among  a  greater  num 
ber  of  individuals,  it  will  lessen  the  responsibility,  which  is  certainly 
heavy.  The  States  will  be  more  apt  to  be  satisfied  with  the  decision  of  a 
tribunal  consisting  of  an  unusual  number.  When  united,  the  influence  of 
their  opinion  with  the  public  will  be  increased  by  the  increased  number  of 
judges.  The  chief  danger  to  be  feared  is  their  division  in  opinions.  I 
trust  this  will  be  guarded  against  in  the  only  way  it  can  be,  by  the  selec 
tion  of  suitable  men.  This  is  of  vast  importance,  and  ought  to  be  effect 
ually  attended  to.  Good  judges  will  do  well,  under  almost  any  organi 
zation,  and  bad  ones  will  make  poor  work,  however  perfect  the  system 
may  be.  In  the  determination  of  mere  legal  questions  in  the  Supreme 
Court,  the  increased  number  of  judges  can,  as  I  think,  do  no  good,  and, 
should  they  all  be  fit  for  their  places,  it  will  do  little,  if  any  harm.  But, 
should  they,  by  reason  of  indolence  or  incapacity,  fall  into  a  habit  of 
determining  causes  by  major  vote,  or,  for  the  sake  of  saving  labor,  of 
devolving  the  duty,  by  rotation,  on  a  single  member,  the  court  will  be 
ruined. 

"  The  most  important  consequence  of  this  measure  is  its  tendency  to 
satisfy  and  conciliate  the  Western  States.  It  will  lessen,  if  not  destroy, 
their  antipathy  to  the  Supreme  Court.  The  apparent  union  of  sentiment 
between  the  East  and  West  augurs  well.  The  close  union  which  has  here 
tofore  subsisted  between  the  Southern  Atlantic  and  the  Western  States  has 
done  us  of  the  East  much  mischief.  The  present  auspicious  good  liking 
ought  to  be  carefully  cultivated. 

"I  suppose  the  Supreme  Court,  or  something  else,  will  prevent  your 
attempting  the  bankrupt  system  this  winter.  Were  I  in  your  situation,  I 
would  not  attempt  it,  without  pretty  good  prospect  of  success.  The 
attempting  it  and  failing  would  do  the  public  no  good,  and  might  do  you 
hurt.  Of  this,  however,  you  are  the  best  judge.  You  have  often  suc 
ceeded  in  what  I  deemed  impossible. 


1826.]  CONGRESS  OF  PANAMA.  265 

"I  began  this  with  no  intention  of  writing  you  a  political  lecture,  but 
of  requesting  you  to  have  the  enclosed  letter  delivered  to  Colonel  Wil 
liams,  if  he  remains  still  at  Washington,  and,  if  not,  to  have  it  sent  to  him, 
wherever  he  may  be.  I  am  glad  he  has  the  appointment  to  his  present 
situation,  and  wish  it  was  better  both  in  grade  and  emoluments. 

"We  have  no  news  except  the  low  state  of  the  thermometer,  which 
makes  us  rather  more  stupid  than  ordinary.  Please  to  give  my  and  Mrs. 
Mason's  best  regards  to  Mrs.  Webster,  and  believe  me  as  ever, 

"  Truly  yours, 

"J.  MASON. 

"Mr.  Webster." 

In  the  spring  of  1825,  soon  after  the  inauguration  of  Mr. 
Adams  as  President,  the  Republics  of  Colombia,  Mexico,  and 
Central  America  invited  the  United  States  to  be  represented  at 
a  congress  of  the  American  nations  to  be  assembled  at  Panama. 
At  the  time  of  this  proposal,  the  independence  of  none  of  the 
Spanish- American  States  had  been  acknowledged  by  Spain, 
and  the  war  between  Spain  and  her  former  colonies  was 
still  going  on;  no  part  of  these  colonies,  however,  being  in 
the  actual  occupation  of  Spanish  forces.  In  reference  to  that 
war,  the  United  States,  although  recognizing  the  new  govern 
ments  as  governments  de  facto,  as  in  other  cases  of  civil  war, 
had  yet  maintained  from  the  first  a  position  of  neutrality. 
Still,  it  appeared  to  Mr.  Adams  and  his  Cabinet  that,  as  there 
were  objects  of  peculiar  concern  to  the  whole  of  this  hemi 
sphere,  which  could  be  usefully  considered  in  such  a  meeting, 
the  United  States  might  take  part  in  its  discussions  without 
entering  into  any  questions  concerning  the  war,  or  the  belliger 
ent  operations  or  relations  ;  and,  subject  to  that  understanding 
with  the  three  republics  which  had  extended  the  invitation, 
and  with  a  general  reference  to  the  questions  in  the  considera 
tion  of  which  the  United  States  would  consent  to  participate, 
Mr.  Adams  accepted  the  proposal  to  send  commissioners  to 
Panama.  On  the  assembling  of  Congress  in  December,  1825, 
the  President  nominated  Richard  C.  Anderson,  of  Kentucky, 
and  John  Sergeant,  of  Pennsylvania,  as  the  envoys  to  be  sent 
to  the  Congress  of  Panama,  which  had  already  met ;  and  he 
asked  the  House  of  Representatives  for  an  appropriation  to 
enable  him  to  carry  but  this  diplomatic  purpose. 

Such  was  the  simple  origin  of  a  proposal  which  encountered 


266  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

a  strong  resistance,  and  led  to  protracted  discussion  in  both 
Houses,  and  around  which  the  scattered  elements  of  a  political 
opposition  to  the  Administration  were  first  arranged.  Intrinsi 
cally,  the  project  was  not  one  of  great  importance ;  but  it 
appeared  to  Mr.  Webster  that  Mr.  Adams  had  done  rightly  in 
accepting  the  invitation ;  and  it  was  quite  plain  that  the  Presi 
dent  had  acted  within  the  scope  of  his  constitutional  authority, 
in  undertaking  to  enter  into  diplomatic  relations  with  a  body 
known  to  the  usages  of  nations.  Still,  it  is  not  probable  that 
Mr.  Webster  would  have  taken  any  considerable  part  in  the 
discussions  on  this  measure,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  turn 
given  to  it  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  where  an  effort 
was  made  which  he  regarded  as  an  encroachment  on  the  con 
stitutional  prerogative  of  the  President,  and  which,  with  his 
characteristic  watchfulness  over  the  Constitution,  he  desired  to 
prevent  from  becoming  a  precedent. 

Upon  a  resolution  which  merely  proposed  to  declare,  as  the 
sense  of  the  House,  that  it  was  expedient  to  appropriate  the 
funds  necessary  to  enable  the  President  to  send  ministers  to 
the  Congress  at  Panama,  Mr.  McLane,  of  Delaware,  and  Mr. 
Hives,  of  Virginia,  moved  amendments,  w^hich  undertook  to 
instruct  the  ministers  what  they  should  discuss,  consider,  or 
consult  upon,  with  the  representatives  of  other  powers  whom 
they  were  to  meet.  This  led  to  the  speech  delivered  by  Mr. 
Webster,  on  the  subject  of  this  mission,  upon  the  14th  of  April, 
1826.1  It  embraces  an  elaborate  explanation  of  what  the  Con 
gress  of  Panama  was,  as  a  diplomatic  body,  in  the  eye  of  the 
public  law.  Mr.  Webster  showed  it  to  be  an  assembly  of  the 
representatives  of  certain  nations  met  to  deliberate  upon  their 
common  concerns,  in  which  it  was  competent  to  any  nation 
to  be  represented  to  whom  an  invitation  was  extended ;  and  he 
held  that  the  appointment,  and  the  instruction  as  well  as  the 
appointment,  of  ministers  to  such  a  body,  was  a  matter  in 
which  the  House  of  Representatives  could  have  no  voice.  In 
its  discussion  of  the  constitutional  relations  of  the  different 
departments  of  our  Government  to  diplomatic  action,  the 
speech  has  a  general  and  permanent  importance.  It  also 
embraces  a  full  exposition  of  the  real  meaning  and  bearing  of 

1  Works,  iii.  178-217. 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  267 

that  declaration  of  Mr.  Monroe,  respecting  the  interference  of 
European  powers  in  the  affairs  of  this  continent,  which  has 
been  popularly  called  the  "  Monroe  Doctrine." 

[FROM  MR.  DENISON.] 

"  LONDOX,  February  23, 1826. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  In  writing  to  you  at  this  moment,  I  might  with  justice 
say,  as  one  of  our  friends  of  Rome  said  of  old :  *  Cum  tot  sustineas,  el 
tanta  negotia — I  should  err  against  the  public  weal,  if  I  should  occupy 
your  time  with  too  long  a  discourse.'  But,  in  truth,  I  am  too  much  en 
gaged  just  now  myself  to  commit  this  fault.  What  prompts  me  to  write 
cat  this  moment  is,  that  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  hear  yesterday  from  Mr. 
Rufus  King  that  Captain  Morris  was  now  in  London.  With  Mr.  King's 
assistance  I  found  him  out  this  morning ;  and  as  he  tells  me  he  is  about  to 
return  to  Washington,  where  he  expects  to  meet  you,  I  cannot  let  him 
pass  between  us  without  a  few  lines  of  friendly  remembrance. 

"I  received  ten  days  ago  the  National  Intelligencer  containing  your 
speech  on  the  introduction  of  your  proposition  for  the  alteration  of  the 
judiciary,  and  about  that  time  the  first  volume  of  the  '  Debates  of  Con 
gress.'  I  am  much  obliged  to  you  for  these  two  proofs  of  your  kind 
remembrance.  It  does  not  fall  within  the  compass  of  a  hurried  letter  to 
enter  upon  the  vast  subject  of  your  Supreme  Court,  the  corner-stone  of 
your  whole  edifice.  I  congratulate  America  that  so  solemn  and  weighty  a 
subject  has  fallen  into  such  hands  as  yours.  Your  speech  commands  my 
admiration,  as  your  view  of  the  question  carries  with  it  my  concurrence. 
I  am  afraid  you  have  fixed  the  last  rivet  in  the  chains  of  our  friend  the 
Judge.  I  shall  be  extremely  sorry,  indeed,  to  find  that  the  hope  of  seeing 
him  amongst  his  brethren  here  is  utterly  gone.  Westminster  Hall  is  swept 
and  garnished  for  his  reception,  and  there  are  many  persons  here  who 
would  be  very  happy  to  make  the  Judge's  acquaintance,  and  in  whose 
society  mutual  pleasure  would  be  given  and  received. 

"  I  hope  you  received  safely  your  package  of  books,  and  one  or  two 
letters  that  I  wrote  to  you  last  summer,  and  that  the  Judge  received  a 
book  I  sent  to  him  and  a  letter  written  early  in  September,  which  I  believe 
is  the  latest  communication  I  can  profess  to  have  made. 

"You  will  have  been  contemplating,  not  without  astonishment,  the 
extraordinary  depression  under  which  our  affairs  have  been,  and  are  labor 
ing.  Much  of  what  has  occurred  was  clearly  foreseen,  and  plainly  pre 
dicted  by  Mr.  Huskisson  and  some  others ;  the  extent  to  which  it  has  gone 
(and  it  has  not  yet  reached  its  ultimate  point)  was  hardly  within  the 
power  of  human  calculation.  It  happens,  very  unfortunately  for  the  inter 
ests  of  truth  and  sound  policy,  that  these  embarrassments,  concurring  in 
point  of  time  with  the  alteration  in  our  commercial  laws,  are  by  a  large 
and  powerful  body  in  this  country  attributed  mainly  (though  very  falsely) 
to  their  enactment. 


268  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

"  February  28. — I  wrote  so  far  on  the  morning  of  the  23d — that  after 
noon  I  took  Captain  Morris  with  me  to  the  House  of  Commons,  where, 
though  no  very  particular  business  was  expected,  fortunately  a  debate  of 
great  interest  occurred.  I  shall  leave  Captain  Morris  to  describe  it  to  you. 
The  first  debate  arose  on  a  petition  from  the  city,  that  a  select  committee 
might  be  appointed  to  inquire  into  the  causes  of  the  present  commercial 
distress,  and  to  devise,  if  possible,  some  remedy  for  it.  This  was  the 
ostensible  object;  the  real  one  was  to  induce  the  government  to  issue 
exchequer  bills  as  a  temporary  relief.  On  this  subject,  Captain  Morris 
heard  Mr.  Canning  and  Mr.  Kobinson  speak  shortly ;  he  heard  one  dis 
agreeable,  foolish  man  coughed  down ;  he  heard  a  Scotchman,  and  some 
country  gentlemen,  and  an  alderman  or  two  deliver  themselves,  each  in 
his  particular  line. 

"  Then  followed  the  question  of  retracing  our  steps  on  the  silk  laws. 
The  subject  itself  was  one  of  sufficient  importance,  and  one  of  great  im 
mediate  interest,  from  the  pressing  distress  to  which  all  branches  of  that 
trade  are  exposed  through  their  own  miscalculations.  But  much  more 
was  meant  than  met  the  eye,  and  through  the  sides  of  silk  a  deadly  blow 
was  aimed  at  the  whole  system  of  our  new  commercial  regulations,  and  at 
Mr.  Huskisson's  character  and  fame.  He  rose  under  many  disadvantages, 
at  the  close  of  a  long  debate,  with  a  large  party  in  the  House  hostile  to 
his  views,  and  with  many  of  his  friends  faltering  in  their  allegiance.  He 
entered  into  a  general  review  of  the  commercial  policy  of  this  country,  past 
and  present,  and  made  the  most  masterly  statement  on  the  subject  of  trade 
that  ever  was  exhibited  before  Parliament.  By  this  he  has  accumulated  a 
new  load  of  reputation  to  his  former  great  character.  He  has  proved  him 
self  true,  under  the  best  of  all  proofs,  a  pressure  of  difficulties,  and  has 
raised  himself  to  the  second  place,  second  only  to  Mr.  Canning,  in  the 
House,  and  in  the  country.  Captain  Morris  will  tell  you  how  his  speech 
was  received.  If  he  thinks  we  were  very  tumultuous,  we  were  so  beyond 
our  ordinary  expression.  I  never  recollect  a  speech  received  with  such 
loud  and  unanimous  cheering  since  I  have  been  in  Parliament.  Certainly 
upon  none  have  greater  consequences  depended.  If  he  had  failed  in  his 
defence — for  upon  his  trial  he  stood  before  a  House  of  Commons  which  had 
already  sanctioned  his  measures — I  verily  believe  we  might  have  been 
driven  back  step  by  step  to  the  old  fastnesses  of  selfish  prohibition.  His 
speech  turned  the  tide,  raised  his  character  higher  than  it  has  ever  yet 
stood,  and  has  confirmed  his  policy  even  beyond  the  power  of  prejudice  to 
overthrow  it.  I  hope  this  speech  will  be  published.  I  will  take  care  you 
have  it  immediately. 

"  I  have  been  greatly  delighted  by  receiving  a  very  long  and  kind  letter 
from  Judge  Story  this  afternoon.  He  gives  me  an  account  of  your  trip  to 
Niagara,  through  the  State  of  New  York.  I  think  the  Trenton  falls  exceed 
any  scenery  of  the  same  dimensions  that  I  am  acquainted  with,  in  exquisite 
finished  beauty,  and  the  Falls  of  Niagara  in  their  way  surpass  every  thing 
in  splendor  and  awful  grandeur.  He  tells  me,  too,  something  of  your 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  269 

political  existence,  of  which  I  had  partially  informed  myself  through  your 
papers,  and  from  some  private  hands.  I  may  well  congratulate  you  on  its 
general  features.  It  is  not  right  to  meddle  with  the  affairs  of  individuals, 
but  I  think  some  politicians  have  played  safer  games  than  a  certain  young 
— South  Carolinian,  is  he  not  ? — late  of  the  War  Department,  is  now  play 
ing  at  Washington.  I  must  trust  to  you  and  the  Judge  to  keep  me  in  a 
certain  degree  on  a  pace  with  the  changes  and  the  progress  of  your  strid 
ing  country.  If  I  remain  stationary  for  a  few  years,  you  will  be  out  of  my 
sight,  and  it  will  be  then  too  late  to  resume  the  chase.  It  seems  not  im 
probable  that  affairs  may  keep  you  at  home  for  the  present,  and  that  you 
cannot  be  spared  for  your  visit  here.  If  so,  I  shall  only  look  upon  it  as  a 
pleasure  delayed,  and  not  taken  away.  For  I  feel  sure  that  you  will  some 
day  come  and  afford  me  the  very  sincere  pleasure  of  conducting  you 
around  this  little  sea-girt  land. 

"  Pray,  say  for  me  every  thing  most  kind  to  the  Judge,  and  give  him 
my  best  thanks  for  his  long  and  interesting  letter.  I  wish  we  had  him 
here  to  let  us  into  the  true  secret  of  safe  banking ;  we  have  all  been  rack 
ing  our  brains,  and  writing  pamphlets,  and  making  speeches  on  this  sub 
ject,  which  practically  we  have  certainly  not  administered  well.  We  hope 
to  go  on  sounder  principles,  and  pursue  them  with  a  steadier  course.  I 
shall  not  answer  the  Judge's  letter  immediately,  because  you  will  give  him 
my  present  thanks,  and  a  short  interval  perhaps  may  produce  something 
of  greater  interest.  The  commission  which  has  been  examining  into  the 
practice  of  our  Court  of  Chancery  has  closed  its  inquiry,  and  framed  its 
report.  This  will  be  published  shortly,  and  shall  immediately  be  sent  for 
your  and  the  Judge's  examination.  We  shall  do  nothing  this  year  about 
the  Catholic  question,  or  the  Corn  Laws.  Both  will  be  submitted  to  the 
new  Parliament  next  year ;  the  Corn  Laws  will  probably  be  taken  up  by 
the  government,  the  other  has,  I  fear,  made  little  progress  in  public 
opinion.  I  dare  make  uo  prophecy  as  to  when  it  may  pass,  and  receive 
the  triple  sanction  of  Parliament.  The  condition  of  Ireland  in  the  mean 
time  is  decidedly  improving,  and  has  already  made  most  essential  advances, 
but  it  is  still  such  as  no  Englishman  can  contemplate  without  regret  and 
shame,  and  no  Irishman  without  still  more  bitter  feelings. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  hear  from  the  Judge's  letter  that  a  package  of  books  I 
sent  you,  with  one  included  to  him,  has  never  reached  you.  I  shall  send 
into  the  city  immediately  to  make  inquiries  on  the  subject.  I  shall  look 
out  for  a  few  pamphlets  and  books  to  send  you  by  Captain  Morris,  who 
has  been  good  enough  to  undertake  to  deliver  them  to  you. 

"  I  beg  you  will  make  my  respects  to  the  President,  and  assure  all  those, 
who  may  be  good  enough  to  have  kept  me  in  mind,  of  the  grateful  remem 
brance  I  entertain  of  their  individual  civilities,  and  of  my  general  reception 
in  the  United  States.  You  will  know  several  to  whom  I  would  be 
specially  remembered. 

"  I  have  seen  Lord  Stowell  once  or  twice  lately ;  he  was  much  flattered 
by  the  assurances  I  felt  authorized  to  give  him  of  the  great  reputation  he 


270  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

enjoys  amongst  you;  he  desired  his  best  compliments  to  the  Judge.    The 
chancellor  has  lately  rallied,  which,  if  it  was  not  treason  to  say  so,  I  am 
x  almost  sorry  for. — Believe  me, 

"  My  dear  sir, 

"  Your  sincere  friend, 

"  J.  E.  DENISON. 

"  Stanley  is  yet  in  the  country  with  his  wife,  Wortley  with  his  wife  in 
town.  He  moved  the  address  in  a  good  and  sensible  speech  this  year. 
Labouchere  is  in  town,  and  very  well.  I  met  Mr.  Addington,  too,  the  other 
day  here,  very  well. 

"  I  hear  from  the  office  through  which  the  package  to  you  was  sent,  that 
it  was  shipped,  and  the  ship  arrived  safe  at  New  York,  probably  in  August 
last.  It  was  sent  to  the  care  of  Le  Hoy,  Bayard  &  Co.,  and  is  now  most 
likely  lying  in  the  custom-house,  or  some  warehouse." 


[TO  MB.   DENISON.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  May  3, 1826. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIB  :  I  received  yesterday  your  letter  of  the  23d  February, 
and  am  greatly  obliged  to  you  as  well  for  the  letter  itself  as  for  the  valu 
able  pamphlets  with  which  you  accompanied  it.  We  are  now  within  fif 
teen  or  twenty  days  of  the  end  of  our  session,  and,  according  to  our  custom 
(and  I  suppose  according  to  yours  also),  these  last  days  are  exceedingly 
crowded  with  business.  Upon  the  whole,  it  has  not  been  a  session  in 
which  we  have  dispatched  many  concerns  of  great  moment.  It  has  been 
a  talking  winter.  The  President's  proposition  to  send  ministers  to  the 
Congress  at  Panama  has  led  to  endless  debates,  especially  in  the  Senate. 
The  measure  has  met  with  much  opposition,  by  which  more  was  intended 
than  the  defeat  of  the  measure  itself.  Various  parties,  not  likely  to  act 
together  often,  united  on  this  occasion  in  a  close  phalanx  of  opposition. 
The  measure,  however,  has  succeeded  by  a  small  majority  in  the  Senate, 
and  a  large  one  in  our  House, 

"Another  long  topic  has  been,  a  plan  for  amending  the  Constitution  in 
the  manner  of  electing  President.  This  grew  out  of  the  event  of  the  late 
election.  After  much  tedious  discussion,  we  leave  the  matter  as  we  found 
it.  Our  other  subjects  have  not  been  of  particular  interest. 

"  Mr.  Eandolph  was  elected  last  fall  a  Senator  from  Virginia.  It  was 
unexpected ;  but  his  great  devotion  to  certain  political  opinions  cherished 
in  that  State  gave  him  the  election.  He  is  a  violent  opposer  of  the  pres 
ent  Government,  and  has  conducted  his  part  of  the  discussions  in  the 
Senate  in  a  way  hitherto  altogether  unknown.  The  Vice-President  has 
found  out  that  he  has  no  authority  to  call  him  to  order,  or  restrain  his 
wanderings ;  so  he  talks  on  for  two,  four,  and  sometimes  six  hours  at  a 
time,  saying  whatever  occurs  to  him  on  all  subjects.  This  course,  and  its 
indulgence  by  the  presiding  officer  of  the  Senate,  has  produced  a  very 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  271 

strong  sensation  throughout  the  country.  It  is  now  said  he  will  sail  for 
England  in  a  few  days,  to  pass  the  summer. 

"  We  hear  that  Mr.  King  is  coming  immediately  home,  on  account  of 
ill-health.  I  regret  very  much  his  sudden  return.  It  is  quite  unseasonable. 
I  hardly  know  what  will  be  done,  not  having  seen  the  President  since  the 
information  arrived.  I  hope,  however,  somebody  will  be  sent  out  to  bring 
pending  negotiations  to  a  close,  and  should  not  be  surprised  if,  with  that 
view,  Mr.  Gallatin  should  be  selected. 

"  I  have  read  your  debates  thus  far  with  great  and  peculiar  interest. 
The  questions  in  your  House  have  been  such  as  are  connected  with  general 
principles  of  great  importance.  In  my  poor  judgment,  your  friends  are 
clearly  right  on  the  currency  question,  the  silk-trade  question,  etc.  On 
the  silk  question,  Mr.  Huskisson's  speech  is  most  admirable.  I  read  it  in 
the  Courier,  but  am  happy  to  have  it,  through  your  kindness,  in  a  more 
correct  form.  I  have  read  it  a  second  time  here  in  my  study  with  real 
delight,  and  enjoyed  his  triumph,  when  he  resumed  his  seat,  almost  as  much 
as  he  himself  could  have  done.  Pray,  tell  him,  what  I  hope  he  would  not 
be  displeased  to  know,  that  there  are  men  on  this  side  of  the  globe  who 
admire  his  liberal  principles,  and  the  singular  ability  and  excellent  sense 
with  which  he  recommends  those  principles  to  the  adoption  of  his  coun 
trymen.  His  speech  on  the  silk-trade  question  appears  to  me,  on  the 
whole,  his  greatest  effort ;  and  next  to  this  I  place  that  which  he  made 
several  years  ago,  on  what  I  thought  a  very  wild  proposition  in  your  House, 
for  the  equitable  adjustment  of  contracts. 

"  I  entertain  no  doubt  that  the  prohibition  of  the  circulation  of  small 
notes  is  a  good  measure,  and  will  produce  all  the  benefit  intended  by  it, 
although  it  may  have  some  effect  to  continue  the  immediate  pressure  ;  or, 
rather,  it  may  retard,  in  some  degree,  the  natural  progress  of  relief  and 
restoration.  As  it  is  prospective,  however,  in  its  operation,  and  for  the 
present  deferred,  perhaps  this  effect  may  hardly  be  perceptible.  It  is  quite 
true  that  gold  and  paper  will  not  circulate  together.  It  is  quite  true  also 
that  two  kinds  of  paper,  of  different  values,  cannot  circulate  together, 
however  small  the  difference.  We  have  much  experience  of  this  last 
truth.  For  example,  we  have  in  Massachusetts  many  country  banks,  all 
being  incorporated  institutions,  well  regulated,  and  in  good  credit.  Their 
notes  are  payable  only  where  issued.  These  notes  get  to  Boston;  they  pass 
in  the  common  exchanges,  and  for  all  ordinary  purposes ;  yet,  as  they  are 
payable  fifty  or  a  hundred  miles  from  town,  they  are  not  quite  so  good  as 
notes  of  the  Boston  banks.  Now,  the  consequence  is,  that  these  country 
notes  fill  up  the  whole  circulation.  Hardly  is  there  a  Boston  note  to  be 
seen ;  and,  in  order  to  correct  this,  it  has  been  found  necessary  that  these 
country  banks  should  make  provision  for  the  redemption  of  their  notes  in 
Boston,  as  well  as  on  their  own  counters  at  home.  You  will  experience,  as 
I  should  think,  the  same  thing  in  England,  if  you  establish  country  banks, 
making  their  notes  payable  only  where  issued.  These  notes  will  be  so 
good  that  they  will  be  taken,  and  yet  not  so  good,  quite,  as  Bank  of  Eng- 


£72  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

land  notes,  or  the  notes  of  London  bankers,1  "because  the  bank  and  London 
bankers  will  not  receive  them,  in  deposit,  as  cash.  They  will  still  pass,  in 
all  small  payments,  at  all  the  shops  in  London,  and  the  consequence  will 
be  that  bankers  will  take  them  up,  at  small  but  different  rates  of  discount, 
for  gold  or  Bank  of  England  notes.  York  notes  will  be  at  one  rate,  Welsh 
notes  a  little  higher,  Worcestershire  a  little  lower,  etc.,  according  to  dis 
tance  from  London.2  Let  me  tell  you  a  short  story.  A  year  or  two  ago,  a 
client  of  mine,  a  trader,  came  to  my  rooms  to  pay  me  for  a  legal  opinion. 
The  sum  was  fifty  dollars.  He  handed  me  ten  five-dollar  notes  on  a  coun 
try  bank,  in  good  credit,  but  a  hundred  miles  from  Boston.  He  was  a 
good-natured  man,  and  I  addressed  him  thus :  '  You  give  me  this  fee  in 
country  notes ;  now,  I  wish  to  tell  you  what  I  suspect.  I  suspect  that,  when 
you  left  your  counting-house,  you  filled  up  a  check  on  a  Boston  bank,  for 
fifty  dollars ;  you  put  it  in  your  pocket,  and,  on  your  way  hither,  you  have 
called  at  a  broker's,  sold  your  check  for  these  country  notes,  and  have 
received  a  premium  of  one  or  one  and  a  half  per  cent. — say  fifty  or  seventy- 
five  cents,  with  which  it  is  your  intention  to  buy  a  leg  of  mutton  for  din 
ner.  Now,  sir,  that  mutton  is  mine ;  you  shall  not  dine  at  my  expense  in 
your  own  house.  The  legal  opinion  which  I  gave  you  was  not  lelow  par  ;  I 
will  not  be  paid  in  any  thing  which  is — sit  down  and  draw  me  a  check 
for  fifty  dollars.'  He  at  once  admitted  that  the  process  had  been  as  I 
stated,  very  nearly. 

"I  have,  indeed,  understood,  that  heretofore  the  notes  of  country 
bankers  would  not  pass  in  London.  Possibly  that  may  continue  to  be 
the  case,  but  I  should  expect  that  they  would  make  their  way,  and, 
if  so,  I  have  no  doubt  the  same  evil  will  be  felt,  in  time,  which 
we  have  experienced  here.  But,  my  dear  sir,  I  am  talking  upon  what 
you  must  understand  much  better  than  I  do,  and  I  will  tax  you  no 
further. 

"  We  have  a  countryman  of  yours  here,  a  Captain  Wylde,  of  the  artil 
lery,  who,  I  had  the  pleasure  to  find,  is  a  Nottingham  man,  and  an 
acquaintance  of  yours. 

"  I  have  forgotten  to  tell  you  that  my  books  all  arrived  safe,  soon  after 
I  wrote  you  last.  I  hardly  yet  know  what  accident  detained  them,  but 
they  arrived  in  good  time,  nevertheless. 

"You  have  a  busy  summer  before  you.  I  suppose  you  will  be  dis 
solved  next  month  and  have  a  warm  July  of  it.  I  should  admire  to  be  in 
England  during  a  general  election.  It  must  be  an  occasion,  I  should 
think,  in  which  one  could  see  a  good  deal  of  the  true  Mr.  Bull.  I  trust 
your  Catholic  vote  will  not  endanger  your  seat,  as  you  thought  it  might  if 
the  elections  had  come  on  earlier.  It  would  be  unkind  in  your  constit 
uents  to  let  their  resentment,  on  account  of  that  vote,  be  felt.  I  shall  con 
tinue  to  rely  on  your  friendship  to  send  me  occasionally  such  speeches, 

1  "  I  believe  your  London  bankers  do  2  "  This  is,  of  course,  conjectural,  but 
not  issue  notes."  such  has  been  our  experience." 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  273 

pamphlets,  etc.,  as  you  may  happen  to  notice,  and  as  you  may  think  inter 
esting. 

"Mrs.  Webster  is  with  me  here.  She  commands  me  to  make  her 
remembrances  to  you.  I  had  occasion  lately  to  write  Mr.  Stanley,  but 
must  beg  you  to  renew  as  well  to  him,  as  Mr.  Wortley  and  Mr.  Labouchere, 
my  assurances  of  regard  and  attachment. 

"  Pray  what  has  become  of  Colonel  Dawson  ? 
"  I  am,  my  dear  sir, 

"  Most  truly  yours, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTEE. 

"  I  shall  see  the  good  Judge  by  25th  instant,  in  his  court  in  Boston. 
He  will  be  most  glad  to  hear  from  you." 


[FROM  MB.  MASON.] 

"  PORTSMOUTH,  May  7, 1826. 

"DEAR  SIB:  I  have  just  received  your  letter.  I  regret  exceedingly 
that  Mr.  King  is  to  return  so  speedily,  for  many  reasons.  It  is  unfortu 
nately  timed  for  him.  His  bad  state  of  health,  of  which  I  was  before 
aware,  is  doubtless  the  chief  cause.  If,  however,  he  knew  it  was  deter 
mined  at  Washington  to  send  Mr.  Gallatin  out  to  aid  him  in  his  negotia 
tions,  it  is  possible  that  might  influence  him  in  requesting  leave  to  return 
sooner  than  he  otherwise  would  have  done.  Unless  his  feelings  toward  Mr. 
Gallatin  are  now  different  from  what  they  were  ten  years  ago,  it  would  not 
be  entirely  pleasant  to  be  associated  with  him. 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  you  cannot,  under  existing  circumstances,  assert 
your  claim  at  the  present  time.  Should  the  Government  offer  you  the 
appointment,  I  think  you  ought  not  to  refuse  it.  But,  if  I  mistake  not,  it 
will  be  thought  you  cannot  at  this  time  be  spared  from  the  House  of 
Representatives.  And,  as  far  as  I  understand  the  state  of  that  body,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  your  presence  there  at  the  ensuing  session  very  im 
portant. 

"  In  my  opinion,  you  have  a  right  to  insist  that  such  arrangements  be 
made,  if  they  can  be  without  injury  to  the  public  interests,  that  you  shall 
not  be  defeated  of  that  appointment  eventually,  and  at  a  period  not  more 
than  two  years  distant.  How  this  arrangement  is  to  be  made  I  do  not 
know.  If  Mr.  Gallatin  should  be  appointed  for  a  special  mission,  and  go 
out  before  Mr.  King's  return,  I  suppose  all  the  duties  of  a  minister  resident 
would,  of  course,  be  devolved  on  him.  I  see  no  inconvenience  in  such  a 
mission  continuing  for  two  or  three  years,  unless  there  should  be  some 
thing  in  court  etiquette  forbidding  it.  A  continuance  of  two  years  prob 
ably  would  not  be  unpleasant  to  Mr.  Gallatin.  Should  he  be  appointed  as 
regular  minister  resident,  it  may  be  doubtful  whether  he  would  be  desirous 
of  returning  as  soon  as  may  be  wished.  He  remained  in  France  several 
years  after  he  first  began  to  talk  of  returning, 
19 


274  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

"  Our  Circuit  Court  sits  to-morrow,  when  I  expect  from  Judge  Story  a 
stock  of  Washington  news.  With  Mrs.  Mason's  and  my  best  regards  to 
Mrs.  Webster,  and  wishing  you  a  safe  return  home, 

"  I  am  truly  yours, 

"J.  MASON. 

"  I  have  read  your  Panama  speech,  which  has  reached  here.  It  is  all 
that  it  should  be.  It  is  read  with  eagerness,  and  abundantly  praised.  The 
opposition  can  gain  nothing  on  this  subject.  They  misjudged  in  attempt 
ing  to  attach  such  vast  importance  to  it.  What  I  chiefly  regret  in  that 
matter  is  the  course  adopted  by  Mr.  McLane.  I  fear  it  is  an  indication  of 
his  inclination  favorable  to  the  opposition." 

From  the  commencement  of  this  session  of  Congress  in 
December,  1825,  to  its  termination  in  May,  1826,  Mr.  "Web 
ster's  occupations  were  incessant.  On  the  8th  of  May  he  wrote 
to  Judge  Story  that  since  the  first  day  of  December  he  had  not 
been  an  "  inch "  from  his  place,  till  the  previous  Saturday, 
when  he  rode  a  few  miles  on  horseback.  He  went  home  about 
the  middle  of  May.  His  health,  however,  was  good,  and  it 
well  needed  to  be  so,  for  there  was  awaiting  him,  in  the  near 
but  as  yet  undeveloped  future,  another  of  those  occasions  on 
which  no  voice  but  his  could  speak  to  the  country  as  its 
emotions  demanded. 

On  the  4th  of  July,  1826,  John  Adams,  at  Quincy,  and 
Thomas  Jefferson,  at  Monticello,  died  within  a  few  hours  of 
each  other,  each  conscious  of  the  day  that  was  his  last  on  earth. 
This  extraordinary  coincidence,  which,  it  has  been  well  said,  is 
unparalleled  in  history,  produced  a  most  profound  impression 
throughout  the  country.  Commemorative  services  were  every 
where  held.  In  Boston  the  municipal  authorities  requested 
Mr.  "Webster  to  pronounce  a  public  discourse  on  the  lives  and 
services  of  these  great  leaders  of  the  Revolution;  and,  in  com 
pliance  with  this  request,  the  eulogy  which  is  so  well  known 
was  delivered  on  the  2d  of  August,  1826.  Again  I  must  resort 
to  the  same  pen  from  which  I  have  borrowed  the  description 
of  the  Plymouth  Oration  and  the  Address  at  Bunker  Hill : 

"In  1826,"  observes  Mr.  Ticknor,  "when  Mr.  Webster  was  preparing  his 
discourse  in  commemoration  of  Adams  and  Jefferson,  he  talked  with  me 
much  about  it.  It  seemed  to  embarrass  him  in  several  parts,  and  to  satisfy  him 
less  in  the  composition  than  he  had  been  satisfied  in  preparing  the  address 
on  Bunker  Hill  the  year  before.  He  showed  me  no  part  of  it  while  he  was 


1826.]  EULOGY  ON  ADAMS  AND  JEFFERSON.  275 

writing  it,  but,  when  he  considered  it  as  finished,  he  read  me  the  whole. 
Of  course,  I  had  nothing  but  gratification  to  express.  The  very  day,  how 
ever,  before  he  was  to  deliver  it,  he  sent  for  me  early  in  the  forenoon  to 
come  to  his  house  (next  to  Colonel  Thorndike's,  in  Summer  Street).  He 
was  walking  up  and  down  his  room  when  I  went  in,  a  good  deal  excited, 
and  at  once  proceeded  somewhat  abruptly  to  repeat  the  two  speeches 
attributed  to  an  opponent  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  to  Mr. 
Adams  in  reply  to  him.  He  said  that  he  had  just  written  them,  and  that 
he  was  quite  uncertain  whether  they  were  the  best  or  the  worst  part  of  the 
discourse.  I  had  no  doubt  about  the  matter.  I  told  him  that  I  did  not 
know  whether  they  were  better  than  the  description  of  eloquence  which 
preceded  them  or  not,  but  that  there  was  certainly  nothing  else  equal  to 
them  in  the  whole  of  it. 

"  The  next  day,  the  3d  of  August,  the  weather  was  fine,  and  the  con 
course  to  hear  him  immense.  It  was  the  first  time  that  Faneuil  Hall  had 
been  draped  in  mourning.  The  scene  was  very  solemn,  though  the  light 
of  day  was  not  excluded.  Settees  had  been  placed  over  the  whole  area  of 
the  hall ;  the  large  platform  was  occupied  by  many  of  the  most  distin 
guished  men  in  New  England,  and,  as  it  was  intended  that  every  thing 
should  be  conducted  with  as  much  quietness  as  possible,  the  doors  were 
closed  when  the  procession  had  entered,  and  every  part  of  the  hall  and 
galleries  was  filled.  This  was  a  mistake  in  the  arrangements ;  the  crowd 
on  the  outside,  thinking  that  some  space  must  still  be  left  within,  became 
very  uneasy,  and  finally  grew  so  tumultuous  and  noisy  that  the  solemnities 
were  interrupted.  The  police  in  vain  attempted  to  restore  order.  It 
seemed  as  if  confusion  would  prevail.  Mr.  Webster  perceived  that  there 
was  but  one  thing  to  be  done — he  advanced  to  the  front  of  the  stage,  and 
said,  in  a  voice  easily  heard  above  the  noise  of  tumult  without  and  of 
alarm  within,  '  Let  those  doors  T)e  opened."1  The  power  and  authority  of  his 
manner  were  irresistible — the  doors  were  opened,  though  with  difficulty, 
from  the  pressure  of  the  crowd  on  the  outside ;  but,  after  the  first  rush, 
every  thing  was  quiet,  and  the  order  during  the  rest  of  the  performance 
was  perfect. 

"  Mr.  Webster  spoke  in  an  orator's  gown,  and  wore  small-clothes.  He 
was  in  the  perfection  of  his  manly  beauty  and  strength ;  his  form  filled  out 
to  its  finest  proportions,  and  his  bearing,  as  he  stood  before  the  vast  mul 
titude,  that  of  absolute  dignity  and  power.  His  manuscript  lay  on  a  small 
table  near  him,  but  I  think  he  did  not  once  refer  to  it.  His  manner  of 
speaking  was  deliberate  and  commanding.  When  he  came  to  the  passage 
on  eloquence,  and  to  the  words,  'It  is  action,  noble,  sublime,  godlike 
action,'  he  stamped  his  foot  repeatedly  on  the  stage,  his  form  seemed  to 
dilate,  and  he  stood,  as  that  whole  audience  saw  and  felt,  the  personifica 
tion  of  what  he  so  perfectly  described.  I  never  heard  him  when  his  man 
ner  was  so  grand  and  appropriate. 

"  The  two  speeches  attributed  to  Mr.  Adams  and  his  opponent  attracted 
great  attention  from  the  first.  Soon  they  were  put  into  school-books,  as 


276  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

specimens  of  English  and  of  eloquence.  In  time  men  began  to  believe 
they  were  genuine  speeches,  made  by  genuine  men  who  were  in  the  Con 
gress  of  '76 ;  and  at  last  Mr.  Webster  received  letters  asking  whether  such 
was  the  fact  or  not.  In  January,  1846,  he  sent  me  from  Washington  a 
letter  he  had  just  received,  dated  at  Auburn,  begging  him  to  solve  the 
doubt.  With  it  he  sent  me  his  answer,  which  is  published  in  his  works, 
saying,  '  The  accompanying  letter  and  copy  of  answer  respect  a  question 
which  has  been  often  asked  me.  I  place  them  in  your  hands  to  serve  if 
similar  inquiries  should  be  made  of  you.' 1  Two  months  after,  in  March 
of  the  same  year,  he  sent  me  a  letter  from  Bangor,  in  Maine,  asking  the 
same  question,  beginning  the  note  which  accompanied  it  with  these  words : 
'Here  comes  another;  I  cannot  possibly  answer  all  of  them  one  after 
another.'  Indeed,  he  continued  to  receive  such  letters  until  the  edition 
of  his  works  was  published  in  1851,  though  the  matter  was  repeatedly 
discussed  and  explained  in  the  newspapers.  The  fact  is,  that  the  speech 
he  wrote  for  John  Adams  has  such  an  air  of  truth  and  reality  about  it, 
that  only  a  genius  like  Mr.  Webster's,  perfectly  familiar  with  whatever  re 
lates  to  the  Revolution,  and  imbued  with  its  spirit,  could  have  written  it."2 

President  Eillmore  informs  me  that  lie  once  asked  Mr. 
Webster,  in  familiar  conversation,  what  authority  he  had  for 
putting  this  speech  into  the  mouth  of  John  Adams,  the  Con 
gress  at  that  period  having  always  sat  with  closed  doors.  Mr. 
"Webster  replied  that  he  had  no  authority  for  the  sentiments  of 
the  speech  excepting  Mr.  Adams's  general  character,  and  a  letter 
he  had  written  to  his  wife,  that  had  frequently  been  published. 
After  a  short  pause,  Mr.  "Webster  added,  "  I  will  tell  you  what 
is  not  generally  known.  I  wrote  that  speech  one  morning  be 
fore  breakfast,  in  my  library,  and  when  it  was  finished  my  paper 
was  wet  with  my  tears." 

[FROM  MR.  j.  E.  DENISON.] 

"  LONDON,  July  11, 1826. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  received  the  other  day  your  agreeable  and  instruc 
tive  letter,  through  the  hands  of  Mr.  J.  King.  I  was  very  sorry  to  miss  Mr. 
Button ;  he  came  to  London  while  I  was  engaged  in  election  matters  in 
Staffordshire,  and  before  my  return  he  had  left  it.  Colonel  Bawson  was 
fortunate  enough  to  fall  in  with  him,  and  I  believe  explained  to  Mr. 
Button  the  cause  of  my  absence,  and  Wortley's,  and  Stanley's.  You  follow 
the  course  of  our  public  business  so  closely,  and  remark  upon  it  so  justly, 
that  it  is  really  superfluous  in  me  to  attempt  to  give  you  any  information. 

1  The  answer  may  be  found  in  his  2  MS.  Recollections  of  Mr.  Webster, 
Works,  i.,  149.  by  Mr.  Ticknor. 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  377 

"  I  predicted  truly  the  effect  my  Catholic  vote  would  produce  at  New 
castle.  I  could  not  have  carried  my  seat  without  a  severe  contest  and  a 
great  expenditure.  I  declined  it  under  such  circumstances ;  secured  the 
return  of  my  friend  and  colleague,  Mr.  Wilinot  Horton,  and  myself  shall 
be  elected  for  Hastings  at  the  opening  of  the  session,  when  the  gentleman 
now  returned  means  to  retire.  I  am  happy  to  say  the  result  of  the  elec 
tions  is  upon  the  whole  not  unfavorable  to  the  Catholic  concessions.  They 
have  gained  in  Ireland  and  lost  something  in  England,  and,  as  far  as  pro 
spective  calculations  can  be  relied  upon,  there  will  be  a  majority  of  about 
twenty  or  twenty-five  for  sending  the  bill  to  the  Lords.  How  will  they 
conduct  themselves  ?  If  the  Parliament  sits  four  sessions,  and  the  House 
of  Commons  sends  the  bill  up  every  session,  I  am  inclined  to  think  the 
Lords  must  make  a  great  gulp  and  swallow  it.  I  was  very  much  obliged 
to  you  for  the  information  contained  in  your  letter  about  the  system  of 
banking  with  you.  I  am  collecting  all  the  information  I  can  on  the  very 
important  question  of  the  currency.  Should  I  be  asking  you  a  very 
troublesome  favor,  if  I  was  to  beg  that  you  would  send  me  over  a  detailed 
account  of  the  banking  system  in  Massachusetts  ?  I  do  not  mean  to  put 
so  heavy  a  tax  on  your  time,  as  to  ask  for  a  description  of  it  under  your 
own  hand.  But  you  could  perhaps  send  me  the  general  laws  that  regulate 
the  banks,  and  the  principles  on  which  they  are  conducted.  How  is  the 
paper  kept  at  par?  "We  find  here  convertibility  not  to  be  a  sufficient 
check.  How  are  over-issues  controlled  or  rectified  ?  Is  there  any  general 
understanding  among  the  banks,  and  a  mutual  interchange  and  exchange 
of  each  other's  notes,  as  is  the  case  in  Scotland  ? 

"  I  much  regret  that  I  did  not  look  more  closely  into  all  this  while  I 
was  at  Boston.  Pray  furnish  me  with  such  facts  as  may  enable  me  to 
comprehend  the  merits  of  your  system,  which  I  know  to  be  so  very  good. 
I  dined  with  Mr.  Huskisson  the  other  day,  and  took  the  liberty  of  showing 
him  your  letter ;  he  desired  me,  when  I  wrote  to  you,  to  make  you  his 
best  compliments,  to  thank  you  for  your  obliging  message,  and  to  say  how 
greatly  struck  he  had  been  with  your  speech  on  the  tariff,  which  he  had  read 
with  the  greatest  pleasure.  I  went  yesterday  to  Sadbrook,  near  Richmond, 
a  villa  of  Mr.  W.  Horton's,  where  Mr.  Huskisson  dined,  and  Mr.  Randolph, 
your  notorious  Virginian.  I  had  not  the  pleasure  of  his  acquaintance  in 
America,  but  we  had  a  good  deal  of  conversation  in  the  course  of  the  even 
ing,  and  I  brought  him  back  to  London  in  my  carriage.  He  is  certainly 
an  extraordinary  man  ;  with  a  very  accurate  memory,  stored  with  minute 
facts.  As  you  and  I  agree  in  politics,  naturally  he  and  I  did  not.  He 
astonished  me  by  some  of  his  doctrines  about  slavery,  and  by  recommend 
ing  the  policy  and  maintaining  the  practicability  of  cutting  the  throat  of 
every  inhabitant  of  the  Island  of  Hayti.  After  what  I  saw  in  the  papers, 
I  expected  to  see  him  put  on  his  hunting-shirt,  but  was  disappointed. 

"  I  leave  England  the  day  after  to-morrow,  cross  to  Calais  or  Ostend, 
and  shall  pass  up  the  Rhine  into  Switzerland,  where  I  shall  spend  two 
months  in  the  neighborhood  of  Lausanne  with  my  friend  Lord  Sandon, 


278  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

who  lias  taken  a  country-house  for  the  summer.  October  and  November 
I  shall  pass  at  Paris,  and  return  to  look  about  me  in  England  for  two 
months  before  the  meeting  of  Parliament.  I  fear  it  will  be  a  winter  of 
great  distress.  Indeed,  it  must  be  one  of  extreme  pressure  and  difficulty. 
The  unprecedented  drought  has  heightened  and  aggravated  every  cause 
of  preexisting  distress.  The  hay-harvest,  which  generally  affords  employ 
ment  to  so  many  laborers,  has  passed  over  in  a  few  days ;  cattle  are  perish 
ing  for  want  of  water  and  pasture;  the  spring  crops,  oats,  barley,  and 
beans,  have  failed  almost  universally.  Wheat  still  looks  well,  but,  after  so 
long  a  drought,  we  fear  a  rainy  harvest.  Prices  are  continually  falling,  and 
the  manufacturing  interest  does  not  yet  begin  to  revive ;  and  add  to  all 
this,  the  potato  crop  must  fail  in  Ireland.  I  have  drawn  you  a  gloomy 
but  faithful  picture  of  the  present  state  of  this  country.  We  cannot  quite 
agree  among  ourselves  as  to  the  cause  of  all  this.  Some  maintain  that  it 
arises  purely  from  overtrading,  some  purely  from  the  fluctuations  in  the 
currency;  one  proposes  a  metallic  circulation;  one  a  paper  circulation, 
and  the  more  depreciated  the  better.  I  much  question  myself  whether 
great  attempts  will  not  be  made  in  Parliament  to  reconsider  the  amount 
of  depreciation  during  the  war,  and  to  try  to  accommodate  the  present 
standard  of  money  to  that  rate.  It  will  be  a  most  important  session.  The 
Corn  Laws,  the  Catholic  bill,  the  currency,  the  new  commercial  system,  will 
be  violently  attacked,  and  almost  every  weighty  matter  will  come  under 
discussion ;  West  Indies  again,  and  what  is  to  be  done  with  the  colonial 
Legislatures.  I  most  earnestly  hope  the  negotiations  pending  between  our 
countries  will  be  speedily  and  satisfactorily  concluded.  Your  Government 
has  a  character  in  Europe  for  an  encroaching  and  aggrandizing  spirit, 
which  makes  it  difficult  to  treat  with  it  on  even  terms.  I  wish  all  men  in 
your  country,  or  at  least  the  prevailing  party,  held  the  language  that  you 
do.  As  an  American,  I  think  I  should  be  quite  satisfied  with  the  tone  of 
dignified  importance  that  you  properly  think  becoming  the  situation  of 
the  United  States.  As  a  neutral,  I  should  think  stronger  language  hardly 
consistent  with  friendly  intercourse.  I  write  freely  to  you,  as  I  should  do 
to  an  intimate  friend  in  England.  Certainly,  my  earnest  wish  is  for  the 
establishment  of  a  perfect  understanding  between  the  two  countries,  that 
would  be  for  the  honor  and  interest  of  both,  as  a  bad  understanding  would 
be  injurious  to  both,  and  to  many  of  the  greatest  and  most  important 
interests  of  the  world. 

"  I  was  much  obliged  to  you  for  the  speeches  you  were  good  enough  to 
send  me.  Mr.  Huskisson's  speech  on  the  shipping  interests  of  the  United 
Kingdom  is  not  yet  published  in  a  separate  pamphlet,  nor  is  there  any 
thing  very  new  or  worth  your  attention. 

"  I  shall  be  really  obliged  to  you  for  the  information  about  the  Massa 
chusetts  banks,  particularly  since  some  conversation  that  I  have  had  with 
Mr.  Huskisson  about  them.  If  you  read  the  report  of  the  Chancery  Com 
mission,  I  should  very  much  value  your  opinion.  I  must  insist  on  having 
the  Judge's  opinion  at  length.  You  may  vote  upon  it  in  the  House  of 


1826.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  279 

Commons,  if  you  please.  If  you  agree  in  a  common  judgment,  I  will  con 
firm  it  by  my  vote,  for  I  am  sure  I  shall  not  have  time  to  read  it  myself,  or 
knowledge  of  the  subject,  or  patience  of  investigation,  to  form  an  opinion. 
"  Thank  Mrs.  Webster  for  her  kind  remembrances,  and  give  all  assur 
ances  of  my  esteem.  I  am  writing  in  a  great  hurry ;  it  is  now  midnight, 
and  at  four  in  the  morning  I  am  to  be  on  board  the  steamboat  that  is  to 
convey  me  to  Calais.  You  say  nothing  of  your  visit  to  England.  If  you 
will  come,  I  don't  know  but  I  will  enter  into  a  compact  to  visit  you  at 
Boston  again,  some  summer  agreed  upon  between  us. 
"  Best  remembrances  to  the  good  Judge, 

"  And  believe  me 

"  Your  sincere  friend, 

"  J.  E.  DENISON." 


[FKOM  MB.  HOPKINSON.] 

"  PHILADELPHIA,  August  30, 1826. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIB  :  I  am  much  obliged  by  your  sending  your  '  Com 
memoration  Discourse,'  which  requires  not  the  partiality  of  friendship  to 
obtain  for  it  unqualified  applause.  Mr.  Walsh  begs  me  to  offer  you  his 
suffrage  in  its  behalf.  He  has  briefly  noticed  it  in  the  Gazette  of  last  even 
ing,  and  wishes  me  to  explain  the  reason  of  his  not  speaking  more  largely 
of  its  merits  at  this  time.  He  has  been  for  several  weeks  in  deep  anxiety 
and  affliction.  His  excellent  wife  has  been  and  continues  to  be  struggling 
with  a  most  distressing,  painful,  and  dangerous  malady.  I  think  there  is 
but  little  hope  of  her  recovery. 

"  Mr.  Walsh  and  myself,  without  any  previous  communication,  were 
both  struck  with  the  circumstance  that  the  argument  given  against  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  is  much  stronger  than  that  in  support  of  it. 
This  confirms  an  opinion  I  have  long  held,  that,  as  things  then  stood,  and 
putting  the  result  out  of  the  case,  the  strength  of  all  human  reasoning  was 
with  those  who  opposed  the  measure,  although  every  elevated  and  noble 
feeling  was  in  favor  of  it.  It  was  one  of  those  bold  and  lofty  steps  which 
outstripped  the  process  of  calculation,  and  set  at  naught  the  conclusions 
of  logic.  Great  spirits  were  made  for  such  occasions ;  and  when  they  em 
bark  in  them  they  must  firmly  resolve  to  *  sink  or  swim,  live  or  die,  survive 
or  perish.' 

"  Kemember  me  affectionately  to  all  your  household,  but  to  the  lady 
particularly. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"Jos.  HOPKINSON." 

[FBOM  THE  HON.  BICHABD  BUSH.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  August  30, 1826. 

DEAB  SIB  :  Yesterday's  mail  brought  me  your  discourse  in  commemo 
ration  of  the  lives  and  services  of  Adams  and  Jefferson,  pronounced  at 


280  LITE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XII. 

Boston  on  the  2d  of  this  month,  and  I  have  just  finished  reading  it.  If 
I  were  to  say  that  it  is  able  and  eloquent,  I  should  give  it  only  the 
common  praise  of  common  productions.  It  takes  much  higher  rank.  It  is 
full  of  commanding  thoughts,  full  of  elevated  patriotism,  full  of  profound 
criticism  applied  to  the  great  subjects,  individual  and  moral,  that  you  had 
in  hand.  It  is  disencumbered  of  all  that  is  little,  in  its  facts,  of  all  that  is 
of  every  day's  hearing,  in  its  reflections.  The  former  are  well  chosen,  and 
we  have  not  too  many  of  them ;  the  latter  are  rich,  condensed,  elementary. 
There  were  parts  that  thrilled  me.  I  read  them  to  my  family,  and  they 
thrilled  them  too.  The  speech  beginning  at  page  38  made  my  hair  rise. 
It  wears  the  character  of  a  startling  historical  discovery,  that  bursts  upon 
us  at  this  extraordinary  moment,  after  sleeping  half  a  century.  Curiosity, 
admiration,  the  very  blood,'  all  are  set  on  fire  by  it.  Nothing  of  Livy's 
ever  moved  me  so  much.  Certainly,  your  attempt  to  pass  the  doors  of  that 
most  august  sanctuary,  the  Congress  of  '76,  and  become  a  listener  and 
reporter  of  its  immortal  debates,  was  extremely  bold,  extremely  hazardous. 
Nothing  but  success  could  have  justified  it ;  and  you  have  succeeded. 

I  pray  you,  sir,  not  to  regard  this  letter  as  idle  compliment.  I  intend 
it  not  in  that  spirit,  but  only  as  a  momentary  record  of  the  true  feelings 
with  which  I  have  risen  from  the  perusal  of  so  admirable  a  specimen  of 
discriminating  and  philosophical  eulogy ;  of  a  composition  which  I  have 
found  all  over  as  animating  as  it  is  intellectual.  With  my  thanks  for  the 
copy  you  have  had  the  goodness  to  send  me,  I  ask  permission  to  tender 
you  the  assurances  of  my  high  respect  and  esteem. 

"KlCHAKD   EUSH. 

"  Hon.  Daniel  Webster." 

[FROM:  MR.  MASON.] 

"  PORTSMOUTH,  September  3, 1826. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  am  truly  sorry  that  I  was  unable  to  comply  with 
your  advice  to  be  at  Cambridge  to  hear  Judge  Story's  oration.  For  a  fort 
night  past  I  have  been  much  indisposed,  occasioned  by  our  most  extraor 
dinary  weather.  I  was  fearful  it  would  end  in  downright  sickness. 
That,  I  trust,  is  warded  off.  I  infer  from  the  newspaper  reports  that  the 
Judge  acquitted  himself  very  ably,  and  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of  his 
auditors. 

"  Of  your  oration  there  seems  to  be  but  one  opinion.  Without  saying 
any  thing  of  its  merits,  in  point  of  eloquence,  I  really  think  you  have  man 
aged  the  subject  with  most  admirable  address,  of  which  no  small  share 
was  necessary,  considering  your  own  situation.  I  do  not  see  that  you 
have  exposed  yourself  to  serious  abuse  from  any  quarter.  .  .  . 

"  Faithfully  yours, 

"J.  MASON." 

Mr.  "Webster  was  elected  to  Congress  in  the  autumn  of  this 
year,  for  the  third  time,  as  the  Representative  of  the  Boston 


1826.]  ELECTED  TO   CONGRESS  FOR  THE   THIRD  TIME.  281 

district  in  the  Twentieth  Congress,  by  a  majority  of  votes  as 
large  as  in  the  preceding  elections.  He  was  now  nominated 
and  voted  for  by  the  "  Kepnblican "  party ;  comprehending 
that  portion  of  the  old  Democratic  party  which  supported  in 
general  the  Administration  of  Mr.  Adams,  and  which  was  not 
merged  in  the  organization  then  forming  for  the  elevation  of 
General  Jackson  to  the  presidency. 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cu.  XIIL 


CHAPTEE   XIII. 

1826-1827. 

BANKRUPT   LAW — CASE   OF   OGDEN  VS.    SAUNDERS — DIFFICULTIES   IX 
GEORGIA COLONIAL   TRADE — SPANISH   CLAIMS. 

AT  the  second  session  of  the  Nineteenth  Congress,  which 
commenced  in  December,  1826,  Mr.  Webster,  as  chair 
man  of  the  Judiciary  Committee  of  the  House,  reported  a  bill 
for  the  establishment  of  a  uniform  system  of  bankruptcy,  which 
he  had  founded  on  a  bill  received  from  the  Senate  at  the  last 
session,  and  into  which  he  had  also  very  carefully  incorporated 
such  provisions  of  the  recent  English  bankrupt  law  as  were 
applicable  in  this  country.  At  this  precise  time,  the  condition 
of  the  question,  as  to  State  laws  of  insolvency  discharging  debt 
ors  from  their  contracts,  was,  that  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  had  already  decided  that  such  laws  are  constitu 
tionally  invalid  to  discharge  contracts  made  before  their  pas 
sage  ;  but  the  question  in  relation  to  their  effect  on  contracts 
made  after  their  enactment  was  now  pending  in  that  court, 
and  was  expected  to  be  argued  at  its  approaching  session.  Mr. 
"Webster  said,  however,  that,  whatever  might  be  the  decision  of 
this  question,  it  would  not  deter  him  from  laboring  to  obtain 
the  adoption  of  a  national  system  of  bankruptcy.  The  Con 
stitution  having  given  to  Congress  power  to  regulate  this  sub 
ject,  he  was  always  of  opinion  that  there  should  be  a  standing 
bankrupt  law,  to  operate  uniformly  throughout  the  country. 
His  bill  was  read  a  second  time,  and  referred  to  a  Committee 
of  the  Whole,  but  it  was  not  acted  upon. 


1826.]  THE  CREEK  INDIANS.  283 

It  may  be  stated  in  this  connection  that  in  the  case  of 
Sturges  vs.  Crowninshield,  decided  by  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  in  1819,  it  had  been  held  that  a  State  law, 
which  undertakes  to  discharge  debtors  from  contracts  made 
before  its  enactment,  is  a  law  that  impairs  the  obligation  of  a 
contract,  and  is,  therefore,  prohibited  by  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States.  The  question  presented  in  the  case  of 
Ogden  vs.  Saunders,  which  was  argued  in  the  Supreme  Court 
at  the  January  term,  182T,  and  in  the  discussion  of  which  Mr. 
Webster  took  part,  was  whether  a  contract,  made  after  the 
passage  of  a  State  law  which  undertakes  to  discharge  debtors 
on  a  surrender  of  their  property  for  distribution  among  their 
creditors,  is  not  equally  within  the  prohibition  of  the  Federal 
Constitution.  Mr.  "Webster  argued  against  all  this  distinction 
between  past  and  future  contracts,  maintaining  that  it  was  the 
purpose  of  the  Constitution  to  prohibit  State  Legislatures  from 
passing  any  law  impairing  the  obligation  of  any  contract,  and 
that  a  law  which  discharges  a  debt,  whenever  contracted,  in 
the  constitutional  sense  impairs  its  obligation.  He  contended 
that  Congress  alone  is  vested  with  authority  to  discharge  from 
the  payment  of  debts,  as  Congress  alone  can  provide  the 
medium  in  which  a  debt  is  to  be  paid.1  But  a  majority  of 
the  judges  held  that  an  insolvent  law  of  a  State  does  not 
impair  the  obligation  of  future  contracts  between  its  own 
citizens.2 

At  this  session  it  became  necessary  for  Mr.  Webster  to  take 
a  very  firm  and  decided  stand  in  relation  to  a  dangerous  con 
troversy  that  had  sprung  up  between  the  United  States  and  the 
State  of  Georgia.  In  1825  a  treaty  had  been  made  between 
the  United  States  and  the  Creek  Indians,  at  a  place  called 
Indian  Springs,  by  which  that  tribe  had  ceded  to  the  United 
States  their  title  to  certain  lands  lying  within  the  limits  of  the 
State  of  Georgia.  If  this  treaty  had  taken  effect,  the  lands, 
pursuant  to  an  agreement  between  Georgia  and  the  United 
States,  would  have  become  the  property  of  Georgia.  But,  pre 
vious  to  the  period  assigned  for  the  operation  of  this  treaty  of 

1  See  the  argument  in  the  case  of  the  majority,  and  were  of  the  same  opin- 
Ogden  vs.  Saunders.  Works,  vi.,  24,  et  seq.  ion  with  Mr.  Webster  in  respect  to  the 

2  Chief- Justice  Marshall  and  Mr.  Jus-  meaning  of  the  Constitution.      See  12 
tice  Story  dissented  from  the  opinion  of  Wheaton's  Reports,  213. 


284  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIII. 

Indian  Springs,  the  Creek  nation  complained  to  the  Govern 
ment  of  the  United  States  that  it  had  been  negotiated  by  per 
sons  not  duly  authorized,  and  that  they  were  dissatisfied  with 
its  provisions.  A  new  treaty  was  thereupon  negotiated  and 
ratified,  the  first  article  of  which  declared  that  the  treaty  of 
Indian  Springs  was  annulled.  In  the  mean  time,  however,  the 
State  of  Georgia,  claiming  that  the  first  treaty  had  operated  to 
vest  in  her  the  lands  embraced  in  it,  and  now  contending  that 
the  later  treaty  had  not  divested  that  title,  and  also  claiming 
that,  if  the  former  treaty  had  been  annulled,  the  repeal  did  not 
operate  upon  the  whole  tract,  sent  surveyors  upon  a  certain 
portion  of  the  territory  to  lay  out  the  lands  as  part  of  the  prop 
erty  of  the  State.  By  the  last  treaty,  the  United  States  had 
guaranteed  to  the  Indians  protection  in  all  their  lands  lying 
beyond  a  certain  line,  which  was  the  line  over  which  the  officers 
of  the  State  had  now  encroached ;  and  there  was  an  existing 
law  of  the  United  States  which  punished  the  acts  of  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  whether  as  trespassers  or  as  surveyors,  who 
should  interfere  to  run  lines  on  lands  guaranteed  by  treaty  to 
the  Indian  tribes.  The  State  had  threatened  to  support  its 
officers  by  military  force,  and  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  had  no  alternative,  if  this  course  were  persisted  in,  but 
to  repel  the  aggression  by  the  same  means. 

In  this  posture  of  the  affair,  President  Adams  sent  a  mes 
sage  to  Congress,  communicating  the  facts,  intimating  with 
great  distinctness  what  it  might  become  his  duty  to  do,  and 
submitting  to  Congress  to  determine  whether  further  legislation 
was  necessary  to  meet  the  emergency. 

The  reading  of  this  message  in  the  House  was  followed  by 
an  excited  discussion,  in  which  Mr.  Forsyth,  of  Georgia,  and 
other  members,  resisted  all  reference  of  it  to  any  committee,  but, 
if  it  should  be  determined  to  refer  it  at  all,  they  insisted  that  it 
should  go  to  a  Committee  of  the  "Whole,  or  to  a  Select  Com 
mittee,  and  not  to  the  Committee  on  the  Judiciary.  The 
course  of  the  Administration  was  denounced  as  "  infamous  ; " 
and  it  was  boldly  asserted  by  a  member  from  Mississippi  that 
his  State  would  extend  its  legislative  power  over  the  Indians 
within  its  limits,  and  at  its  own  pleasure.  Mr.  "Webster  having 
said  that  the  States  would  so  act  at  their  peril,  he  was  assailed 


1826.]  THE   CREEK  INDIANS.  285 

as  the  organ  of  the  Administration  fulminating  threats  against 
sovereign  States.  He  then  felt  it  to  be  his  duty  to  come  forward 
and  carry  the  reference  of  this  message  through  the  House  with 
a  firm  hand.  Repeating  the  rebuke  he  had  already  admin 
istered,  he  explained  the  peril  which  a  State  would  incur  by 
resisting  the  execution  of  a  treaty  of  the  United  States,  stated 
both  sides  of  the  question  between  Georgia  and  the  United 
States  with  equal  fairness,  and  confessed  his  willingness  to 
appropriate  money  to  extinguish  the  Indian  title  to  the  lands 
in  controversy.  But  he  demanded  a  reference  of  the  message 
to  a  Select  Committee,  and  carried  it  without  a  division 
of  the  House.  The  following  extracts  from  his  remarks  will 
exhibit  the  manner  and  the  spirit  with  which  he  met  the 
attack : 

"  Mr.  Webster  said,  on  rising,  that  he  was  not  much  concerned  what 
course  this  communication  should  take,  or  whether  it  should  be  referred 
to  one  committee  or  another ;  but  he  was  not  contented  that  it  should  be 
supposed,  either  here  or  elsewhere,  that  there  existed  an  entire  unanimity 
of  opinion  with  the  gentleman  from  Georgia  on  this  subject.  The  gentle 
man  from  Georgia  must  know  that  there  were  two  sides  to  this  question 
between  Georgia  and  the  United  States ;  and  he  would  tell  the  gentleman 
from  Georgia  that  there  existed  two  opinions  also,  not  only  on  that  ques 
tion,  but  on  the  conduct  which  that  gentleman  had  designated  as  '  base 
and  infamous.' 

"  This,  Mr.  Webster  said,  was  strong  language,  but  not  argument.  The 
gentleman  had  told  the  House  that  nothing  prevented  every  thing  from 
going  right  in  Georgia  but  the  interference  of  the  General  Government. 
The  gentleman  denounced  such  interference,  saying  in  effect,  <  Hands  off 
for  the  present ;  leave  the  Indians  to  the  remedy  of  the  courts.'  But,  Mr. 
Webster  said,  he  would  tell  that  gentleman,  that  if  there  were  rights  of 
the  Indians,  which  the  United  States  were  bound  to  protect,  that  there 
were  those  in  the  House  and  in  the  country  who  would  take  their  part. 
If  we  have  bound  ourselves  by  any  treaty  to  do  certain  things,  we  must 
fulfil  such  obligation.  High  words  will  not  terrify  us— loud  declamation 
will  not  deter  us  from  the  discharge  of  that  duty.  For  myself,  the  right 
of  the  parties  in  this  question  shall  be  fully  and  fairly  examined,  and  none 
of  them  with  more  calmness  than  the  rights  of  Georgia.  In  my  own 
course  in  this  matter,  I  shall  not  be  dictated  to  by  any  State,  or  the  Rep 
resentative  of  any  State  on  this  floor.  I  shall  not  be  frightened  from  my 
purpose,  nor  will  I  suffer  harsh  language  to  produce  any  reaction  on  my 
mindj  I  will  examine  with  great  and  equal  care  all  the  rights  of  both 
parties.  Occasion  had  been  taken  on  the  mere  question  of  reference  of 
this  communication,  he  would  not  say  for  argument,  but  for  the  assump- 


286  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIII. 

tion  of  a  position,  as  a  matter  perfectly  plain  and  indisputable,  that  the 
Government  had  been  all  in  the  wrong  in  this  question,  and  Georgia  all  in 
the  right.  For  his  own  part,  Mr.  Webster  said,  he  did  not  care  whether 
the  communication  did  or  did  not  go  to  a  Committee  of  the  Whole  on  the 
state  of  the  Union,  nor  how  soon  it  went  there,  and  was  there  taken  up  for 
discussion.  When  he  went  into  that  committee,  he  should  go  there  not  in 
a  spirit  of  controversy,  nor  yet  in  a  spirit  of  submission,  but  in  a  spirit  of 
inquiry,  calmly  and  deliberately  to  examine  the  circumstances  of  the  case, 
and  to  investigate  the  rights  of  all  parties  concerned.  But  he  had  made 
these  few  remarks  to  give  the  gentleman  from  Georgia  to  understand  that 
it  was  not  by  bold  denunciation,  or  by  bold  assumption,  that  the  members 
of  this  House  are  to  be  influenced  in  the  decision  of  high  public  con 
cerns. 

"  The  gentleman  from  Mississippi  had  reason  to  know  that  he  (Mr. 
Webster)  was  disposed  to  use  all  proper  authority  of  the  United  States  to 
extinguish  Indian  titles  to  lands  within  the  States.  But  he  must  tell 
the  gentleman  from  Mississippi  that  the  States  would  act  on  their  own  re 
sponsibility,  and  at  their  own  peril,  if  they  undertake  to  extend  their  legis 
lation  to  lands  where  the  Indian  title  has  not  been  extinguished.  If  any 
such  measure  was  contemplated  in  the  State  which  the  gentleman  repre 
sented,  Mr.  Webster  hoped  that  gentleman  would  lose  no  time  in  warning 
his  friends  against  making  any  such  attempt.  The  relation  which  the 
United  States  held  to  these  tribes,  of  parental  guardianship  over  the  rem 
nant  of  mighty  nations  now  no  more,  was  a  very  delicate  relation.  Its 
general  character  was  that  of  protection,  and,  while  every  facility  was 
given  to  the  extinguishment  of  the  Indian  title,  let  not  that  circumstance  be 
so  far  presumed  on  that  the  States  should  attempt  to  exercise  authority 
within  the  Indian  limits.  Any  such  course  would  be  attempted  at  their 
own  responsibility.  Mr.  Webster  concluded  by  saying  that  he  was  ready 
to  do  all  that  could  be  done  to  extinguish  the  Indian  title  in  the  States, 
and  particularly  in  the  States  east  of  the  Mississippi.  But  this  disposition, 
common  to  all  parts  of  the  country,  should  not  be  so  far  presumed  upon 
as  that  any  State  should  undertake  of  its-  own  mere  motion  to  exercise  an 
authority  over  the  lands  to  which  the  Indian  title  is  guaranteed  by 
treaties." 

Iii  the  course  of  this  discussion  on  the  Georgia  controversy, 
Mr.  Forsyth,  speaking  of  Mr.  Webster,  referred  to  "  the  great 
and  commanding  influence  which  he  too  often  exercises  here." 
That  influence  had  to  be  again  exerted  on  the  introduction  of 
a  bill  from  the  Senate  regulating  the  very  difficult  and  com 
plicated  subject  of  trade  with  the  British  colonies.  The  bill 
had  been  framed,  as  Mr.  Webster  thought,  with  an  insufficient 
comprehension  of  a  system  of  laws  that  extended  back  to  the 
year  1818.  It  provided  that,  if,  before  the  31st  of  December, 


1826.]  TRADE  WITH  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES.  287 

1827,  the  English.  Government  should  open  the  colonial  trade 
to  us  without  discriminating  duties  on  their  part,  the  President 
might  issue  a  proclamation  opening  the  trade  on  equal  terms 
on  our  part.  But  it  overlooked  the  effect  of  our  former  legis 
lation,  which,  in  the  event  of  an  adherence  by  Great  Britain  to 
her  present  system  of  exclusion,  would,  after  the  31st  of  De 
cember,  open  our  ports  to  vessels  coming  from  her  colonies 
without  any  discriminating  duties.  In  the  House  an  amend 
ment  was  offered,  providing  that,  if  no  arrangement  should 
take  place  by  treaty  before  the  31st  of  December,  nor  any  Act 
of  Parliament,  or  Order  in  Council,  should  meet  our  offers  of 
reciprocity  embraced  in  this  bill,  our  former  laws  excluding 
British  vessels  from  the  colonies  should  be  revived,  and  put  in 
force.  Mr.  Webster  deemed  it  his  duty  to  have  this  amend 
ment  adopted,  and  adhered  to  by  the  House,  preferring  the 
defeat  of  the  bill  to  its  passage  without  the  amendment.  But, 
in  order  to  effect  this,  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  enter  upon 
an  elaborate  explanation  of  a  matter  that  was  very  imperfectly 
understood.  He  succeeded  in  causing  the  adoption  of  the 
amendment,  and  in  subsequently  leading  the  House  to  adhere 
to  it ;  in  consequence  of  which  the  bill  was  lost,  and  a  great 
blunder  was  prevented. 

At  this  time,  of  so  much  activity  in  public  business,  while 
giving  his  attention  to  many  subjects  not  within  the  ordinary 
range  of  a  lawyer's  studies,  and  supplying,  by  the  fulness  of  his 
knowledge,  the  deficiencies  of  others,  Mr.  Webster,  it  must  be 
remembered,  was  engaged  in  a  very  large  practice  in  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  and,  when  not  in  Wash 
ington,  was  constantly  employed  in  his  profession  elsewhere. 
He  had  also  been  for  several  years  the  leading  counsel  for  the 
prosecution  of  claims  under  the  Florida  Treaty  of  1819,  for 
indemnification  on  account  of  the  spoliations  committed  by 
Spanish  cruisers  on  American  commerce  in  1788-'89.  The 
commissioners  appointed  to  adjudicate  these  claims  sat  at 
Washington  at  various  times  from  1821  to  1826.  'Not  only  was 
the  investigation  long  protracted,  but  the  business  was  ex 
tremely  intricate,  and  the  labor  required  for  it  was  proportion- 
ably  great.  Mr.  Webster  had  a  very  large  number .  of  the 
claims  committed  to  his  hands,  and,  when  the  awards  were 


288  LIFE  OF  DAXIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIII. 

finally  made  and  paid,  his  fees  amounted  to  about  seventy 
thousand  dollars. 

In  the  winter  of  1826  his  engagements  in  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  were  unusually  heavy.  It  appears 
that,  among  the  regularly  reported  cases  of  this  term,  he 
argued  fifteen ;  in  which  number  are  not  included  the  argu 
ments  made  on  motions. 

As  this  was  the  period  when  the  transfer  of  Mr.  Webster 
from  the  House  of  Representatives  to  the  Senate  began  to  be 
considered,  some  idea  should  be  formed  by  the  reader  of  the 
personal  sacrifices  he  was  called  upon  to  make  by  that  change 
of  his  position.  Indeed,  by  being  in  public  life  at  all,  and,  for 
that  reason  alone,  he  failed  to  do  what  he  might  easily  have 
done,  that  is,  to  earn  the  largest  professional  income  of  his  time 
in  the  United  States.  So  long  as  he  continued  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  he  could  still  discharge  his  public  duties, 
sustain  by  far  the  heaviest  burden  that  rested  upon  the  shoul 
ders  of  any  one  member  of  that  House  during  Mr.  Adams's 
administration,  and  yet  maintain  a  remunerating  practice  in 
the  Supreme  Court,  and  in  the  special  tribunals  that  from  time 
to  time  sat  in  "Washington.  But  events  were  approaching 
which  were  to  render  his  position  in  the  Senate  one  that  would 
make  still  greater  inroads  upon  his  professional  income. 


1827.]  PUBLIC  LIFE  BECOMES  INEVITABLE.  289 


CHAPTEK   XIY. 

1827-1828. 


ELECTED  TO  THE  SENATE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  -  ILLNESS  AND 
DEATH  OF  MRS.  WEBSTER  AT  NEW  YORK  -  HER  FUNERAL  IN 
BOSTON  -  RETURN  OF  MR.  WEBSTER  TO  WASHINGTON  -  VISITED 
BY  MR.  TICKNOR  AND  MR.  PRESCOTT  -  SPEECH  FOR  THE  REV 
OLUTIONARY  OFFICERS  -  SPEECH  ON  THE  TARIFF  -  PUBLIC  DIN 
NER  IN  BOSTON  -  THE  PRESIDENTIAL  ELECTION  -  PROSECUTES 
FOR  A  L 
CIATION. 


relation  of  Mr.  Webster  to  the  administration  of  Mr. 
-L  John  Quincy  Adams  did  not,  as  we  have  seen,  commence 
as  the  relation  of  a  partisan.  At  the  time  of  Mr.  Adams's 
election,  by  the  House  of  Representatives,  parties  had  not  yet 
formed  themselves  into  a  distinct  division  ;  but  the  "  era  of 
good  feeling,"  which  had  prevailed  under  Mr.  Monroe,  was  cer 
tain  to  be  followed  by  divisions  among  the  public  men  of  the 
country,  that  would  lead  to  the  formation  of  defined  parties, 
animated  by  a  spirit  of  hostility  the  more  rancorous,  because 
the  opposition  was  to  be  made  up  from  previously  discordant 
elements,  and  fragments  of  former  parties,  for  the  purpose  of 
elevating  to  the  presidency  a  distinguished  military  chieftain, 
who  had  been  one  of  the  defeated  candidates  at  the  late  elec 
tion.  Mr.  Webster  desired  to  postpone  the  evil  day  of  such 
parties  as  long  as  possible.  His  general  views  respecting  the 
principles  on  which  the  administration  of  the  Federal  Govern 
ment  should  be  conducted  had  never  been  those  of  the  extreme 

20 


290  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIV. 

Federalists,  although  he  had  formerly  acted  with  the  Federal 
party ;  and,  satisfied  with  the  impartial  spirit  of  Mr.  Adams, 
and  believing  that  his  administration  would  be  conducted 
without  personal  objects,  he  desired  to  prolong,  if  possible,  the 
state  of  .things  that  had  existed  under  his  predecessor.  But,  as 
the  "  scattered  elements  "  began  to  arrange  themselves  into  a 
decided  opposition,  Mr.  Webster  was  drawn  more  and  more 
into  a  kind  of  representative  relation  to  the  Administration, 
in  the  House,  because  he  stood  beyond  all  comparison  the 
foremost  man  in  that  body,  and  because  he  was  the  most  im 
portant  and  efficient  friend  that  the  administration  possessed  in 
Congress.  His  great  talents,  learning,  and  experience  made 
the  administration  the  strongest  side  of  the  House  in  point  of 
ability,  as  it  was  numerically  the  largest.  In  the  Senate,  the 
weight  of  ability,  and  perhaps  of  numbers,  was  already  on 
the  side  of  the  opposition.  Certainly,  there  was  no  one  friendly 
to  the  Administration,  who  could  be  regarded  as  filling  a  posi 
tion  in  the  Senate  corresponding  to  that  of  Mr.  Webster  in  the 
House,  at  the  termination  of  the  first  session  of  the  Nineteenth 
Congress,  in  the  spring  of  1826. 

There  soon  occurred,  however,  in  the  failing  health  of  Mr. 
Mills,  one  of  the  Senators  from  Massachusetts,  a  necessity  for 
considering  the  question  whether  Mr.  Webster  should  not  be 
transferred  to  the  Senate.  The  period,  therefore,  which  we  are 
now  approaching,  is  undoubtedly  to  be  regarded  as  a  turning- 
point  in  his  life  ;  for,  whatever  may  have  hitherto  been  his 
inclination  or  his  power  to  withdraw  from  all  public  station, 
his  entrance  into  the  Senate  must  be  considered  as  having  fixed 
for  the  remainder  of  his  days,  and  fortunately  or  unfortunately 
for  his  personal  happiness  and  welfare,  his  position  as  a  states 
man  who  belonged  to  the  country,  and  for  whom,  henceforth, 
private  life  was  to  be  a  matter  of  intervals  and  episodes.  We 
may  speculate,  with  varying  conjectures  and  conflicting  feel 
ings,  on  what  might  have  been  the  course  of  his  existence  if  he 
had  never  entered  upon  the  new  career  that  was  awaiting  him 
in  the  Senate.  But  the  real  clew  to  his  life  was  correctly  ex 
pressed  by  one  of  his  friends,  the  Hon.  William  Tudor,  at  this 
time  United  States  consul  at  Lima  :  "  I  have,  in  fact,  long 
apprehended,"  writes  Mr.  Tudor,  "  that  the  business  of  law  and 


1827.]  ELECTION  TO  THE   SENATE.  291 

politics,  and  a  leading  station  in  both,  will  abstract  you  entirely 
from  the  more  amiable  interests  of  private  life,  and  make  you  a 
huge  Colossus,  the  wonder  of  contemporaries,  and  admiration 
of  posterity.  But  however  I  may  lament  such  a  result,  it  is  in 
vain  to  resist  destiny.  '  Some  achieve  greatness ; '  and  Mrs. 
"Webster  and  I  and  I.  P.  D.,  and  others,  who  would  have  liked 
to  have  possessed  you  ourselves,  must  be  content  to  be  chilled 
in  the  increasing  shadows  you  cast.  Be  it  so."  ! 

This  complaint,  a  little  querulous,  perhaps,  on  account  of 
long  silence  toward  an  old  friend,  shows  how  well  that  friend 
understood  the  case  of  one  whose  great  powers  were  the  real 
arbiters  of  his  fate. 

Still  we  shall  find  that,  in  proportion  as  the  public  life  be 
came  more  and  more  exacting,  the  private  life  became  more 
and  more  full  ;  that  its  enjoyments  were  the  more  keenly 
coveted  and  relished ;  that  its  pursuits  and  interests  became 
extremely  various,  and  that  those  who  stood  in  "  the  shadows  " 
really  basked  in  the  sunshine,  whenever  the  world  and  the 
world's  cares  could  be  shut  out.  We  must,  in  fact,  look  to  the 
requirements  of  a  great  nature  which  no  public  ambition  could 
satisfy,  and  no  fame  could  fill,  for  the  key  to  a  life  of  a  totally 
different  character,  which  led  him  to  the  large  and  pecuniarily 
unprofitable  interests  of  agriculture,  to  the  exercise  of  a  free 
hospitality,  to  the  delights  of  the  fowler's  gun  and  the  angler's 
rod,  to  the  society  of  those  who  were  neither  of  the  great,  the 
distinguished,  nor  the  ambitious,  and  to  the  converse  and  the 
solace  of  humble  friends,  who  served  him  with  their  homely 
virtues,  amused  him  by  their  native  originality,  and  loved  him 
with  a  love  unselfish  and  unalloyed.  When  we  follow  him  to 
the  places  where  his  private  life  was  passed,  we  shall  see  how 
much  it  took  to  occupy  and  to  gratify  such  a  nature,  and  we 
shall  find  the  explanation,  if  not  the  excuse,  for  the  fact  that, 
with  almost  unparalleled  opportunities  for  amassing  a  great 
fortune  by  his  profession,  he  died  poor. 

When  Mr.  Webster  left  Boston  to  attend  the  session  of  Con 
gress,  which  commenced  in  December,  1826,  it  was  feared  that 
Mr.  Mills  was  in  a  very  precarious  condition  of  health,  and 

1  Letter  from  William  Tudor,  dated    ing  that  Mr.  Webster  had  not  written  to 
at  Lima,  November  15,  1827,  complain-    him  in  four  years. 


292  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

some  of  the  members  of  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts,  about 
to  assemble,  were  anxiously  considering  whom  to  make  his  suc 
cessor.  Mr.  Webster,  in  the  following  January,  having  been 
written  to  on  the  subject  by  one  of  these  members,  made  the 
following  reply : 

[MB.  WEBSTER   TO  MB.  JOSEPH  E.    SPBAGUE.] 

"WASHINGTON,  January  10, 1827. 

"  MY  DEAB  SIB  :  I  am  quite  obliged  to  you  for  your  letter,  although  I 
confess  it  has  caused  me  some  uneasiness.  I  cannot  persuade  myself  that 
the  Legislature,  under  present  circumstances,  will  omit  to  reelect  Mr.  Mills. 
Here,  I  assure  you,  we  are  all  of  one  mind  on  the  subject.  We  think 
there  is  nothing  in  his  health  to  make  it  improper,  and  that  every  thing 
else  is  in  favor  of  it.  If  the  Legislature  will  not  agree  to  that,  I  hope  the 
election  will  be  postponed.  For  mercy's  sake,  do  not  weaken  our  power  in 
the  Senate  !  When  all  the  Philistines  are  against  us,  do  let  us  have  all  the 
strength  we  can  have.  If  Mr.  Mills  lives,  he  is  second  to  no  man  in  the 
Senate  among  our  friends.  Why,  then,  should  he  be  now  superseded  ? 
We  shall  know  more  of  his  health  in  June ;  and  June  is  early  enough  for 
the  election.  But,  as  I  will  answer  for  it  that  he  will  not  hold  the  office 
any  longer  than  he  is  able  to  discharge  its  duties,  I  should  hope  he  would 
be  now  reflected. 

"  Having  so  settled  an  opinion  as  to  what  is  fit  to  be  done,  namely,  to 
reelect  Mr.  Mills,  or  postpone  the  choice,  I  really  have  not  thought  of  what 
would  be  best  in  case  neither  of  these  two  things  can  take  place.  Of  that, 
my  dear  sir,  you  can  better  judge  than  I.  I  only  say  that  if  you  are  gov 
erned  by  a  disposition  to  sustain  Mr.  Adams,  and  help  on  the  public  busi 
ness,  you  will,  in  all  events,  elect  a  man  of  the  very  best  talents  which  are 
at  your  disposal.  I  pray  you  let  no  local,  nor  temporary,  nor  any  small 
consideration  induce  you  to  refrain  from  electing  the  fittest  man  that  can 
be  found,  and  that  can  possibly  be  prevailed  on  to  take  the  place.  The 
present  moment,  be  assured,  is  a  crisis  in  the  affairs  of  Massachusetts  and 
all  the  North. 

"  I  am,  dear  sir,  very  truly  yours, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER." * 

On  the  13th  of  February  (1827),  the  State  Senate  made 
choice  of  the  Hon.  Levi  Lincoln,  then  Governor  of  the  State, 
for  the  senatorial  term  that  was  to  commence  in  March,  and 
communicated  their  action  to  the  House.  Governor  Lincoln, 
in  a  communication  addressed  to  the  Speaker  of  the  House, 
declined  to  be  considered  a  candidate,  and  the  subject,  in  that 
branch  of  the  Legislature,  was  postponed. 
1  Correspondence,  i.,  424. 


1827.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  293 

At  that  period,  the  Legislature  held  two  sessions  in  the  year ; 
and  when  the  June  session  was  approaching,  and  the  action 
of  the  State  Senate  remained  without  change,  it  became  neces 
sary  for  Mr.  Webster  to  meet  the  desire  expressed  to  him  by 
many  members  of  the  Legislature,  and  by  many  persons  at 
Washington,  that  he  would  allow  himself  to  be  transferred  to 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  His  own  preference  was  for 
Governor  Lincoln,  as  will  be  seen  from  the  following  cor 
respondence  : 

[MB.  WEBSTER  TO   GOVERNOR  LINCOLN.] 

"  BOSTON,  May  22, 1827. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  It  was  my  misfortune  not  to  see  you  on  your  late 
visit  to  this  place,  owing  partly  to  engagements  in  and  out  of  town,  and 
partly  to  a  misapprehension  as  to  the  time  of  your  leaving  the  city.  Dis 
appointed,  then,  in  the  expectation  and  hope  of  a  personal  interview,  I 
now  adopt  this  mode  of  making  a  few  suggestions  to  you  on  a  subject  of 
some  interest ;  I  mean  the  approaching  election  of  a  Senator  in  Congress. 
The  present  posture  of  things,  in  relation  to  that  matter,  is  so  fully  known 
to  both  of  us,  that  I  need  not  trouble  you  with  much  preliminary  observa 
tion.  I  take  it  for  granted  that  Mr.  E.  H.  Mills  will  be  no  longer  a  candi 
date.  The  question  then  will  be,  who  shall  succeed  him  ?  I  need  not  say 
to  you  that  you  yourself  will  doubtless  be  a  prominent  object  of  considera 
tion  in  relation  to  the  vacant  place,  and  the  purpose  of  this  communication 
requires  me  to  acknowledge  that  I  deem  it  possible  also  that  my  name 
should  be  mentioned,  more  or  less  generally,  as  one  who  may  be  thought 
of,  among  others,  for  the  same  situation.  In  anticipation  of  this  state  of 
things,  and  more  especially  since  I  have  been  awakened  by  its  probably 
near  approach,  I  have  not  only  given  it  a  proper  share  of  my  own  reflec 
tion,  but  have  also  consulted  with  others  in  relation  to  it,  in  whose  judg 
ment  and  friendship  I  have  confidence.  The  result  is,  that  there  are  many 
strong  personal  reasons,  and,  as  friends  think  (and  as  I  think,  too),  some 
public  reasons,  why  I  should  decline  the  offer  of  a  seat  in  the  Senate,  if  it 
should  be  made  to  me.  Without  entering,  at  present,  into  a  detail  of  these 
reasons,  I  will  say  that  the  latter  class  of  them  grow  out  of  the  public 
station  which  I  at  present  fill,  and  out  of  the  necessity  of  increasing  rather 
than  of  diminishing,  in  both  branches  of  the  national  Legislature,  the 
strength  that  may  be  reckoned  on  as  friendly  to  the  present  Administra 
tion.  I  hope  you  will  understand  what  I  would  now  wish  to  communi 
cate,  without  imputing  to  me  the  vanity  of  supposing  that  my  services  to 
the  Administration  or  to  the  country,  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  are 
of  any  particular  importance,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  that  it  is  matter  of 
option  with  me  to  change  that  place  for  another.  I  think  quite  differently 


294  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIV. 

in  both  respects.  Nevertheless,  however  inconsiderable  the  first  of  these 
things  may  be,  and  however  contingent  or  improbable  the  last,  they  are 
such  as  to  make  it  convenient  at  the  present  crisis  to  act  upon  the  one  as 
though  it  were  of  some  consideration,  and  to  regard  the  other  as  if  it 
might  probably  or  possibly  happen.  To  come,  therefore,  to  the  main 
point,  I  beg  to  say  that  I  see  no  way  in  which  the  public  good  can  be  so 
well  promoted  as  by  your  consenting  to  go  into  the  Senate.  This  is  my 
own  clear  and  decided  opinion ;  it  is  the  opinion,  equally  clear  and  de 
cided,  of  intelligent  and  patriotic  friends  here,  and  I  am  able  to  add  that 
it  is  also  the  decided  opinion  of  all  those  friends  elsewhere,  whose  judgment  in 
such  matters  we  should  naturally  regard.  I  believe  I  may  say,  without  violat 
ing  confidence,  that  it  is  the  wish,  entertained  with  some  earnestness,  of  our 
friends  at  Washington,  that  you  should  consent  to  ~be  Mr.  MilUs  successor. 
You  will  probably,  as  soon  as  you  arrive  here  next  week,  learn  the  same 
thing  through  another  channel.  I  need  hardly  add,  after  what  I  have  said, 
that  such  also  is  my  own  wish.  We  are  in  a  crisis,  and  it  requires  all  the 
aid  that  can  be  mustered.  If  I  have  not  misunderstood  you,  on  some  for 
mer  occasion,  you  do  not  desire  a  long  continuance  in  your  present  situa 
tion.  If  so,  this  occasion  is  an  apt  and  convenient  one  to  resign  it.  If  you 
should  find  your  employment  at  Washington  not  agreeable,  that  also  may 
be  relinquished,  without  particular  inconvenience,  in  a  short  time.  The 
'  crisis  '  will  terminate,  one  way  or  the  other,  about  the  end  of  the  next  ses 
sion,  or  by  the  beginning  of  the  next  ensuing.  You  will  then  be  able  to  regard 
your  private  wishes,  probably,  as  to  prolonging  your  official  service  there. 
"  A  professional  engagement  will  take  me  to  New  York  at  the  end  of 
this  week.  I  hope  to  return  by  the  5th  or  6th  of  June,  but  possibly  may 
be  detained  longer.  If  you  wish  to  address  me  soon,  please  enclose  your 
letter  to  Nathan  Appleton,  Esq.,  of  this  city,  and  he  will  forward  it  to  me 
wherever  I  may  be.  Mr.  Appleton  is  one  of  our  few  Representatives.  He 
is  intelligent  and  perfectly  well  disposed,  and  I  shall  leave  him  possessed 
with  my  confidence,  and  with  power  to  communicate  my  views  on  this 
subject  to  other  friends,  as  convenience  may  require.  He  is  well  known  to 
you,  I  suppose ;  if  he  is  not,  you  may  safely  regard  him  as  a  man  of  high 
honor,  and  fit  to  be  treated  with  confidence. 

"I  am,  dear  sir,  very  truly  yours, 

"DANL.  WEBSTER. 
"  His  Excellency  Governor  Lincoln." 


[GOVERNOR  LINCOLN  TO  MR.  WEBSTER.] 

"  WOBCESTEE,  May  24, 1827. 
"  To  the  Hon.  DANIEL  WEBSTER, 

"MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  hasten,  on  the  moment  of  the  receipt  of  your  letter, 
to  a  reply,  in  the  hope  that  it  may  reach  you  before  you  leave  the  city  on 
your  proposed  journey.  Believe  me,  my  dear  sir,  I  am  strongly  impressed 
with  a  sense  of  the  confidence  and  kindness  of  my  friends.  Your  opinions, 


1827.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  095 

too,  came  to  me  with  the  added  weight  of  suggestions  of  friendship.  But 
I  have  to  regret  that,  under  existing  circumstances,  I  cannot  feel  at  liberty 
to  yield  a  conformity  to  them.  My  course,  in  reference  to  the  subjects  to 
which  you  allude,  was  originally  directed  by  considerations,  over  some  of 
which  I  had  no  power  of  control,  and  others  had  relation  to  the  situation 
of  friends,  and  to  what  I  believed  was  due  to  public  sentiment.  The  expres 
sions  of  personal  disinclination  to  the  office  of  United  States  Senator  were 
sincere,  and,  from  the  delicacy  of  my  position  last  year,  were  called  for,  and 
openly  and  repeatedly  made.  Indeed,  it  became  necessary  for  me  to  say 
that  I  should  absolutely  decline  the  place,  if  offered  to  me.  I  have  since 
believed  and  am  now  confirmed  in  the  opinion  (Mr.  Mills  being  out  of  the 
question)  that  the  transfer  to  which  you  otyect  should  be  made.  In  the 
expression  of  this  sentiment  I  have  no  disguise.  If  the  strength  and  sup 
port  of  the  Administration  are  regarded,  it  should  most  certainly  be  done. 
To  your  private  interests,  it  seems  to  me,  it  could  produce  no  additional 
prejudice.  The  sacrifice  of  business  and  of  domestic  duties  and  enjoyments 
is  no  greater  in  the  one  place  than  the  other.  To  the  Administration, 
this  arrangement  must  be  all-important.  I  consider  the  deficiency  of 
power  in  the  Senate  as  the  weak  point  in  the  citadel,  the  breach  already 
made  in  the  walls.  The  force  should  there  be  immediately  strengthened. 
No  individual  should  be  placed  there  who  was  not  now  in  armor  for  the 
conflict ;  who  understood  the  proper  mode  of  resistance,  who  personally 
knew,  and  had  measured  strength  with  the  opposition,  who  was  familiar 
with  the  political  interests  and  foreign  relations  of  the  country,  with  the 
course  of  policy  of  the  Administration,  and  who  would  be  prepared,  at 
once,  to  meet  and  decide  upon  the  character  of  measures  which  should  be 
proposed.  This,  I  undertake  to  say,  no  novice  in  the  national  council 
could  do.  At  least,  I  would  not  promise  to  attempt  it.  I  feel  deeply  that 
I  could  not  do  it  successfully.  I  should  disappoint  the  expectations  of  my 
friends,  and  do  injustice  to  the  little  reputation  I  might  otherwise  hope  to 
enjoy.  There  is  no  affectation  of  humility  in  this,  and,  under  such  impres 
sions,  I  cannot  suffer  myself  to  be  thought  of  in  a  manner  which  may  make  me 
responsible  for  great  mischief  in  defeating  the  chance  of  a  better  selection. 

"  As  to  the  objection  which  I  have  heard  urged  from  your  present  situa 
tion  in  the  House,  it  has  force,  but  is  yet  susceptible  of  a  satisfactory  an 
swer.  Even  from  the  Senate  that  influence  would  continue  to  be  felt  indi 
rectly  where  it  has  heretofore  been  effectually  exercised.  It  could  not  but  be 
selfish,  I  had  almost  said  cowardly,  in  the  host  which  will  remain  to  the 
side  of  the  Administration  in  the  popular  branch,  to  avoid  that  respon 
sibility  which  their  numbers,  and  I  am  well  persuaded  their  talents,  will 
enable  them  triumphantly  to  meet. 

"  But  I  have  already  written  more  and  with  greater  haste  than  I  should. 
I  have  to  repeat  that  I  beg  not  to  be  considered  a  candidate  for  the  sta 
tion,  to  which,  I  feel,  that  the  best  and  kindest  motives  of  friends  would 
assign  me,  but  which  I  venture  to  assure  them,  upon  such  explanation  as  I 
might  more  fully  offer,  they  would  excuse  me  this  time  for  declining.  In 


296  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

this  act  it  will  be  among  the  first  of  my  wishes  to  retain  that  good  opinion 
with  which  you  have  so  highly  honored  me. 

"  I  shall  have  pleasure  in  seeing  Mr.  Appleton,  and  hope  that  he  may 
favor  me  with  an  opportunity  on  my  arrival  in  the  city. 

"With  sentiments  of  the  most  respectful  and  friendly  consideration, 

"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"LEVI  LINCOLN." 

[MB.  WEBSTER  TO  GOVERNOR  LINCOLN.] 

"  NEW  TOEK,  May  30, 1827. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  received  here  your  letter  communicated  through  Mr. 
Appleton.  I  could  have  very  much  wished  that  you  might  have  arrived 
at  a  different  conclusion  on  the  question  of  going  into  the  Senate.  Never 
theless,  I  see  that  there  is  weight  in  some  of  the  reasons  which  you  men 
tion,  and  I  am  aware  also  that  there  are  other  considerations,  not  stated 
by  you,  which,  however  little  they  affect  your  own  mind,  very  naturally 
would  create  in  others  regret  at  your  leaving  your  present  situation. 
Under  existing  circumstances,  I  feel  it  my  duty  to  leave  it  to  others  to  decide 
how  the  place  shall  be  filled.  If  a  satisfactory  appointment  can  be  made 
without  removing  me  from  the  place  I  am  in,  it  will  be  highly  agreeable 
to  me ;  if  it  cannot,  the  matter  must  be  disposed  of  as  others  may  deem  best. 
"  I  am,  my  dear  sir, 

"  With  most  true  regard, 

"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER. 
"  His  Excellency  Governor  Lincoln." 

When  the  Legislature  was  reassembled  in  June,  Mr.  Web 
ster,  without  any  regular  nomination  from  any  quarter,  was 
•elected  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  for  the  term  of  six 
years,  from  the  4th  of  March,  1827,  by  large  majorities.1 

The  following  letters  will  explain  the  reasons  which  led 
many  of  his  friends  to  desire  his  remaining  in  the  Lower  House 
»of  Congress — reasons  which  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts 
felt  it  to  be  their  duty  to  overrule  : 

[FROM  MR.  CLAY.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Hth  May,  1827. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR:  I  duly  received  your  favor  of  the  7th  instant,  and  on 
tlie  interesting  subject  of  it  I  have  conversed  with  the  President. 

1  In  the  House,  Mr.  Webster  received  jority,  of  members  of  the  old  Republican 

202  votes  out  of  328,  and,  in  the  Senate,  party  of  the  country,  to  which  the  Gov- 

•26  out  of  39.     The  Legislature  at  this  ernor  and  most  of  the  members  of  the 

time  was  composed,  by  a  very  large  ma-  Executive  Council  also  belonged. 


1827.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  297 

"  I  had  previously  written  to  Mr.  Silsbee  that  the  pros  and  cons  on 
the  question  of  your  translation  from  the  House  to  the  Senate  were  so 
nearly  balanced  that  I  thought  you  might  safely  pursue  the  bent  of  your 
own  inclination.  The  public  interests  require  you  in  the  House,  and  you 
are  wanted  in  the  Senate.  So  far  as  your  personal  interests  are  to  be  ad 
vanced,  I  incline  to  think  you  had  better  remain  where  you  are.  If  your 
place  could  be  supplied  in  the  House,  then  I  should  say  go  to  the  Senate. 
Oakley  or  Sergeant  might  enable  the  Administration  to  get  along  in  the 
popular  branch,  but  the  course  of  one  and  the  election  of  the  other  are  un 
certain.  If  neither  of  them  come  to  our  aid,  we  possibly  may  do  without 
them,  should  you  be  compelled  to  accept  a  place  in  the  Senate.  The  Ad 
ministration  loses  much,  directly  as  well  as  morally,  for  want  of  such  abili 
ties  as  you  would  carry  into  that  body ;  directly,  by  the  array  of  talents 
on  one  side  (which  it  must  be  owned  the  opposition  there  exhibits)  with 
out  an  adequate  counterpoise  on  the  other,  which  has  the  effect  of  dis 
heartening  friendly  Senators;  morally,  by  the  extraneous  effect  on  the 
country  of  this  unequal  contest. 

"  What  the  President  would  be  glad  to  see  is,  that  Mr.  Lincoln  should 
come  in  place  of  Mr.  Mills,  as  the  state  of  this  latter  gentleman's  health 
dees  not  admit  of  his  longer  serving ;  and  if,  as  it  is  said  to  be  probable, 
Mr.  Silsbee  should  resign,  in  consequence  of  his  being  elected  Governor,  or 
from  any  other  cause,  that  you,  after  the  ensuing  session,  should  take  his 
place.  But  if  Governor  Lincoln  cannot  be  prevailed  upon  to  accept  a  seat 
in  the  Senate,  then  the  President  decidedly  prefers  your  coming  in  at  the 
next  session  as  Mr.  Mills's  successor. 

"  From  McLane  I  have  heard  directly  nothing.  I  have  hoped  that  if 
Delaware  should  send  to  the  House  of  Representatives  next  fall  a  friend  to 
the  Administration,  and  no  very  adverse  events  should  occur  elsewhere, 
Mr.  McLane  might  see  that  it  was  his  interest  to  adhere  to  his  principles, 
and  disentangle  himself  from  his  new  associates ;  and  I  had  thought  that 
the  probability  of  his  adopting  a  correct  course  might  be  influenced  by 
the  consideration  of  his  being  the  leader  of  one  party,  instead  of  being 
eclipsed  in  the  ranks  of  the  other.  But  all  this  is  speculation,  and,  should 
you  go  into  the  Senate,  he  may  still  find  that  his  future  advancement  lies 
rather  on  the  side  of  working  with  you  than  against  you.  Unless  I  am 
much  deceived,  Delaware  will  send  to  the  House  of  Representatives  a 
friend  to  the  Administration. 

"The  recent  changes  in  the  British  ministry  are  very  great,  and  they 
must  have  been  the  result  of  a  radical  difference  of  opinion  on  some  im 
portant  subject.  We  have  no  explanation  of  them  from  Mr.  Gallatin,  from 
whom  I  have  received  no  letter  subsequent  to  the  resignations.  The  most 
obvious  cause  is  that  of  the  Irish  Catholics.  On  the  last  day  of  March, 
Mr.  Huskisson  remained  too  unwell  to  resume  the  negotiation  with  Mr. 
Gallatin.  He  was  trying  to  settle  a  preliminary  point,  respecting  our 
Northeastern  boundary,  with  Mr.  Addington,  but  was  able  to  make  very 
little  progress.  I  should  think  that  the  new  ministerial  arrangements 


298  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

would  occasion  some  further  delay.  I  see,  therefore,  but  little  prospect  of 
Mr.  Gallatin's  speedily  coming  home. 

"  I  have  very  little  late  political  news.  The  meeting  in  Baltimore  was 
all  that  we  could  have  desired  it  to  be.  The  progress  of  correct  thinking 
in  Pennsylvania  continues  to  be  encouraging,  and  in  New  York  our  friends 
are  as  confident  of  success  as  they  need  be.  They  are  about  to  establish  a 
newspaper,  edited  by  Mr.  Leake,  formerly  senior  editor  of  the  Argus,  and 
I  hope  they  will  not  fail  in  that  object.  It  is  much  wanted. 

"From  Kentucky,  my  friends  write  me  in  good  spirits.  We  shall, 
however,  have  warm  work  there,  growing  out  of  our  '  Free  bridge '  ques 
tion,  alias  the  relief  system. 

"  I  have  written  a  short  letter  to  Silsbee,  communicating  the  preceding 
views  in  regard  to  the  Senate. 

"  I  am  making  efforts  to  get  off  to  Kentucky  in  about  a  fortnight.  Un 
less  there  should  be  some  unexpected  occurrence,  I  think  I  shall  go  about 

that  time. 

"  Yours  cordially, 

"  H.  CLAY. 
"  D.  Webster,  Esq. 

"  P.  S. — Your  late  speech  at  Faneuil  Hall  is  all  that  it  should  have 
been.  It  presents  the  true  condition  of  the  existing  state  of  things,  and 
points  out  clearly  the  only  correct  line  of  policy.  In  spite  of  all  the  carp 
ers,  it  will  have  good  eifect.  H.  C." 

[MR.  SILSBEE    TO   MR.  CLAY.] 

"  SALEM,  May  23,  1827. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  Absence  from  home  has  prevented  an  earlier  acknowledg 
ment  of  your  letter  of  the  15th  instant. 

"  It  has  long  been  proverbial  here  that  '  Boston  folks  are  full  of  notions,' 
and  the  ^Republicans  of  the  other  sections  of  the  Commonwealth  have  too 
often  found  this  to  be  the  case  with  their  political  friends  of  the  metropo 
lis  ;  but,  independent  of  this  natural  propensity  to  pursue  a  course  counter 
to  that  of  their  friends,  the  divisions  which  have  been  evinced  in  the 
recent  elections  may  be  attributed  to  other  causes,  and  principally  to  the 
recent  decisions  of  the  State  government  upon  the  bridge  and  lottery 
questions,  which  have  caused  some  excitement  throughout  the  Common 
wealth,  and  much  in  the  vicinity  of  Boston ;  and  the  opponents  of  the 
Administration  are  unwearied  in  their  efforts  to  make  these  divisions  sub 
servient  to  their  purposes,  the  effect  of  which  will  not  be  such  as  may  be 
apprehended  at  a  distance. 

"  It  is  yet  quite  uncertain  who  will  be  elected  to  the  United  States 
Senate  in  place  of  Mr.  Mills.  It  seems  to  be  the  wish  of  a  large  majority 
of  our  friends  in  this  town  that  Governor  Lincoln  should  be  the  man,  but 
it  is  apprehended  that  he  will  not  consent  to  be  a  candidate,  and  it  is 
the  opinion  of  some  that  he  ought  not  to,  while  others  yet  entertain  a  hope 


1827.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  299 

that  he  may  be  prevailed  on  to  consent  to  a  nomination  when  he  sees  (as 
he  will)  that  Mr.  Mills  declines.  I  have  a  letter  now  before  me  from  Mr. 
Lincoln  (in  reply  to  one  written  to  him  on  the  subject),  in  which  he  says, 
'I  know  full  well  that  the  policy  of  a  transfer  from  my  present  office,  at 
this  time,  is  much  doubted  by  a  large  proportion  of  our  Kepublican  friends ; 
and  the  circumstances  which  existed,  and  the  manner  in  which  I  was  sus 
tained  by  the  people  of  the  Commonwealth,  in  the  late  election,  impose  on 
me  the  highest  obligation  to  respect  this  expression  of  their  sentiments. 
I,  therefore,  beg  leave  to  be  permitted  explicitly  to  repeat  my  entire  disin 
clination  to  be  considered  a  candidate  for  the  place  to  which  you  refer. 
It  is  an  arrangement  to  which  I  cannot  consent.  There  are  reasons,  both  of  a 
public  and  private  character,  which  I  am  sure  might  satisfy  you  of  the 
propriety  of  this  determination. 

"  Notwithstanding  this  communication,  I  have  promised  some  friends 
here  that  I  will  see  the  Governor  the  moment  he  arrives  in  Boston,  and 
endeavor  to  remove  his  objections  to  a  nomination,  but  really  I  see  but 
little  hope  of  success.  If  he  persists  in  declining,  Mr.  Webster  will,  I 
think,  be  selected,  though  at  this  moment  doubts  are  expressed  of  the  ex 
pediency  of  removing  him  from  the  House  to  the  Senate.  So  far  as.  my 
own  feelings  are  concerned,  I  should  prefer  seeing  Mr.  "Webster  in  the 
Senate,  at  this  time,  to  any  individual  that  could  be  sent  from  the  State ; 
but  fears  are  entertained  by  many  that  his  removal  may  be  productive  of 
more  injury  than  benefit,  especially  if  Mr.  Oakley,  from  New  York,  should 
be  found  in  the  opposition.  The  '  divisions  and  commotions '  which  now 
exist  in  Boston  will,  I  am  afraid,  operate  unfavorably  to  the  removal  of 
Mr.  Webster,  as  many  of  his  constituents  are  apprehensive  that  they  may 
not  be  able,  at  this  time,  to  elect  a  Representative  with  whom  they  should 
be  satisfied,  and  some  of  them  think  a  new  election  quite  too  hazardous  to 
be  attempted.  As  soon  as  the  Legislature  meets,  efforts  will  be  made  tow 
ard  a  suitable  nomination.  No  one  avowedly  unfriendly  can  succeed.  The 
exertions  of  the  opposition  will,  therefore,  be  directed  toward  one  whom 
they  may  think  most  susceptible  of  conversion. 

"  Anxious  as  I  am  to  resign,  and  great  as  will  be  the  sacrifice  to  me, 
both  of  interest  and  of  inclination,  by  omitting  to  do  it,  yet  I  shall  not 
resign  unless  the  result  of  the  election  about  to  take  place  is  such  as  to 
show,  satisfactorily,  that  it  can  be  done  without  hazard. 

"  With  the  highest  respect,  your  obedient  servant, 

"NATHL.  SILSBEE. 

"  Hon.  Henry  Clay." 

[FROM  ME.  CLAY.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  28^  May,  1827. 

"My  DEAR  SIR:  I  received  your  favor  under  date  the  18th  instant, 
from  Boston.  I  regret  the  state  of  things  there  which  defeated  the  elec 
tion,  but  it  will  have  no  bad  effect  on  the  general  scale. 


300  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

"  Governor  Lincoln,  I  fear,  will  not  be  prevailed  upon  to  run  as  Senator. 
I  transmit  you  a  letter  this  day  received  from  Mr.  Silsbee  on  that  subject. 
The  Governor,  I  believe,  is  well  apprised  of  the  President's  anxious  desire 
that  he  should  be  in  the  Senate.  I  know  not  of  any  further  exertions,  that 
can  be  made  to  induce  him  to  alter  his  determination.  Should  he  adhere 
to  it,  I  have  ventured  to  express  the  opinion  that  it  would  be  expedient 
that  you  should  be  sent.  Should  Oakley  be  friendly,  that  will  abate  the 
objections  to  your  transfer,  although,  as  it  regards  yourself  personally,  I  do 
not  think  they  will  be  entirely  removed. 

"  The  condition  of  affairs  in  New  Hampshire  is  to  be  regretted.  But, 
if  you  are  right  in  supposing  four-fifths  of  the  Republican  party  in  that 
State  to  be  favorable,  Mr.  Hill  cannot  effect  much.  And  sooner  or  later 
he  must  meet  with  the  fate  which  he  merits.  I  have  always  supposed  that 
New  England,  in  all  its  parts,  was  so  friendly  as  not  to  leave  any  doubt 
of  its  final  decision.  I  have  not  a  single  regular  correspondent  in  New 
Hampshire.  I  think  Governor  Bell  (with  whom  I  have  occasionally  ex 
changed  a  letter)  may  be  entirely  confided  in. 

"  From  the  West,  and  from  Pennsylvania  and  Maryland,  the  current  of 
news  continues  to  run  in  a  good  channel.  They  are  getting  very  warm  in 
Kentucky,  but,  unless  I  am  entirely  deceived,  there  is  no  uncertainty  in  the 
final  issue. 

'•I  wish  to  leave  here  about  the  middle  or  last  of  next  week.  I  shall  go 
by  Pittsburg,  where  I  anticipate  a  cordial  reception. 

"  I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  from  you  while  you  are  in  New  York. 

"  The  affair  of  Rio  is  much  less  serious  in  fact  than  it  is  represented  to 
be  in  the  papers.  I  think  Mr.  Raguet  acted  rather  precipitately.  And  I 
hope  we  shall  be  able  to  arrange  it  satisfactorily. 

"  I  am  always 

"  Cordially  your  friend, 

"  H.  CLAY. 

"D.  Webster,  Esq." 

[FROM  THE  HON.  j.  c.  WRIGHT,  ONE  OF  THE  REPRESENTATIVES 
FROM  OHIO.] 

"  STETTBENVILLE,  %Ath  Hay,  1827. 

"  D.  WEBSTER,  Esq. : 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Your  favor  of  the  30th  ultimo  reached  me  some 
days  since,  during  my  absence  of  a  week  attending  court,  and  to 
the  giving  certain  men  the  proper  political  impetus  in  a  neighboring 
county.  This  absence  has  occasioned  the  delay  in  acknowledging  your 
letter. 

"  I  had  understood  from  another  quarter  that  our  friends  in  the  '  Bay 
State '  had  it  in  contemplation  to  send  you  and  some  other  '  strong  man  ' 
to  the  United  States  Senate.  .  .  .  This  information  had  occasioned  me  to 
reflect  on  the  probable  effect  of  removing  you  to  the  Senate,  and  had  really 
given  me  much  trouble.  It  is  useless  to  disguise  the  fact,  your  presence  in 


1827.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  301 

the  House  has  been  thought  essential  in  sustaining  our  cause  in  that  body, 
and  although  Providence,  or  exertion,  might  bring  forth  men,  if  you  were 
absent,  equal  to  any  emergency,  yet  no  one  can  say  where  they  are  to  come 
from,  or  point  out  the  men  now  in  the  House  to  supply  your  place.  Your 
absence  will  be  sensibly  felt  by  our  side,  and  will  inspire  our  adversaries 
with  new  hope  and  courage.  Should  Oakley  be  against  us,  and  Phil. 
Barbour  be  active  and  zealous  on  the  same  side,  they,  with  McDuffie, 
Ingham,  and  Buchanan,  aided  by  the  sarcasms  of  the  crazy  Randolph,  even 
if  Forsyth  should  be  elected  Governor  and  Wickliffe  fail,  will  give  us  a 
hard  tug.  I  fear  Oakley  more  than  any  of  them,  and  am  exceedingly 
anxious  to  have  him  with  us,  though  I  am  yet  unable  to  learn  how  he  is. 
It  is  equally  useless  to  attempt  to  deceive  ourselves  as  to  the  fact  that  our 
opponents  array  more  energetic  operating  talent  on  their  side  in  the  Senate 
than  we  do  on  ours.  I  do  not  intend  to  disparage  our  friends  there,  but 
the  world  says,  and  we  have  all  felt  the  inferiority  of  our  force  in  that 
body.  We  ought  to  have  there  some  of  our  most  powerful  minds.  I  have 
been  astonished  that  New  England  has  not  placed  in  that  station  some 
men  of  more  force.  But  we  must  look  at  the  body  as  it  is.  We  must 
recruit  our  force  there,  and  where  have  we  the  men  at  command  ?  You, 
we  want  in  loth  places.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  we  can  get  along  in 
either  House  without  you.  In  the  Senate,  there  is  little  hope  of  renovating 
the  present  members,  and  imparting  to  them  increased  moral  energy  and 
exertions.  In  the  House,  we  have,  I  think,  better  ground  to  rest  our  hopes 
on — our  men  are  younger,  have  more  elasticity  of  mind,  and,  perhaps, 
pressing  necessity  may  bring  out  talents  and  exertions  equal  to  any 
emergency  we  shall  be  called  to  encounter.  If  Oakley  and  Phil.  Barbour 
be  warmly  against  us,  they,  with  McDuffie,  Buchanan,  and  Randolph  (with 
his  dreaded  sarcasm),  even  if  Forsyth  should  be  Governor,  and  Wick- 
lifle  have  liberty  to  stay  at  home,  will  present  a  force  we  cannot  despise — 
a  force  requiring  strong  power  and  efficient  discipline  to  conquer.  Yet,  I 
incline  to  the  opinion  the  chance  for  us  in  the  House  is  better  than  in  the 
Senate.  And,  though  not  without  great  distrust  of  the  correctness  of  my 
opinion,  I  think  you  should  go  to  the  Senate.  If  it  be  true  that  Mr.  Sils- 
bee  will  retire,  who  will  succeed  him  ?  Give  us  a  strong  man,  and  when 
you  are  about  'improving  the  condition'  of  the  Senate,  suppose  some  of 

you  put  W out  of  the  humor  of  continuing  any  longer,  that  his  place 

may  be  supplied  by  M .    Who  will  succeed  you  ?    Boston  ought  to  be 

able  to  supply  one  of  the  first  order  of  intellect. 

"  The  New-Hampshire  plan  of  sustaining  the  Administration  party, 
without  the  aid  of  Federalists,  is  certainly  injudicious ;  the  cry  of  old  party 
names,  at  this  day,  is  of  no  use  except  to  demagogues ;  honest  men  ought 
to  discountenance  it.  I  regret  your  views  in  Boston  were  opposed  by  any 
local  and  selfish  views — those  seem  to  have  prevented  an  election  of  part 
of  your  Representatives.  Although  your  city  is  denominated  '  headquarters 
of  correct  principles,'  you  can't  boast  much  of  union  in  this  last  election. 
I  hope  for  the  success  of  the  remainder  of  your  ticket  on  the  next  trial.  I 


302  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

see  Baylies  has  agreed,  to  try  his  luck  again.     Cannot  one  of  the  Adminis 
tration  opponents  be  induced  to  retire,  and  the  other  be  elected  ?  .  .  . 

"  Truly  yours, 

"J.  C.  WRIGHT." 

[FROM  THE  HON.    CHARLES  MINER,   MEMBER   OP   CONGRESS   FROM 
PENNSYLVANIA.] 

"WEST  CHESTER,  June,  13, 1827. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR :  The  mail  last  night  brought  the  account  of  your  elec 
tion  to  the  United  States  Senate.  How  can  we  possibly  spare  you  from 
our  House  ?  Who,  when  the  storm  is  up  and  the  billows  roll,  can  we  see 
at  the-  helm,  and  each  one  feel  that  the  vessel  is  safe  ?  Well,  they  need  a 
pilot  in  the  Senate.  I  have  felt  that  our  friends  there  needed  aid  of  a  kind 
no  one  is  so  able  to  afford  them ;  for  the  opposition  happen  to  be  strong  in 
talent  there.  Believing  the  public  good  will  also  be  promoted,  I  con 
gratulate  you  sincerely  on  this  accession  to  your  well-deserved  honors — on 
this  gratifying  testimonial  of  confidence  from  your  noble  State.  The  feel 
ing  of  my  heart  is,  onward,  and  may  the  highest  honors  be  awarded  to  the 
greatest  merit. 

"  With  sentiments  of  perfect  respect, 

"  CHARLES  MINER. 

"Hon.  Daniel  Webster." 

[TO  MR.  DENISON.] 

"  BOSTON,  July  28, 1827. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  It  is  a  great  while  since  you  have  heard  from  me ; 
but  this  you  must  impute,  not  at  all  to  forgetfulness,  nor  altogether  to 
procrastination.  I  wrote  you  a  long  letter  at  Washington,  and  when  I 
supposed  you  had  already  received  it,  it  was  brought  back  to  me,  having 
been  dropped  in  the  street  by  my  servant  on  his  way  to  the  Department 
of  State,  and  taken  up  by  another  servant,  who  kept  it  for  a  month  or  two, 
on  the  supposition,  I  imagine  (he  being  an  ignorant  black),  that  it  might 
contain  money. 

"The  last  letter  which  I  had  the  pleasure  to  receive  from  you  was 
dated  in  April,  and  forwarded  by  your  brother  and  Captain  Hall.1  I  have 
not  yet  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  either  of  those  gentlemen,  but  on  the 
strength  of  your  letter  I  have  written  to  Captain  Hall,  now  in  Canada, 
solicited  the  honor  of  his  acquaintance,  and  expressed  the  hope  that  we 
should  see  him  here ;  and  communicated  through  him  my  respects  and 
salutations  to  your  brother.  Captain  Hall  writes  me  that  he  will  pay  us  a 
visit,  and  I  hope  he  may  bring  your  brother  along  with  him. 

"  I  thank  you  for  the  pamphlets,  etc.,  which  you  were  kind  enough  to 
send  me.  All  such  things  I  read  with  much  interest,  and  shall  be  more 
and  more  obliged  by  every  such  instance  of  your  recollection. 

1  Captain  Basil  Hall. 


1827.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  303 

"  The  recent  political  events  in  England  have  produced  a  good  deal  of 
sensation  and  speculation  on  our  side  the  Atlantic.  It  is  quite  astonishing 
how  extensively  the  debates  and  proceedings  in  your  Parliament  are  read 
in  the  United  States.  Our  interior  papers,  back  to  the  shores  of  the  Mis 
sissippi,  contain  more  or  less  of  them,  and  they  everywhere  excite  some 
degree  of  attention.  "We  are  very  generally  on  Mr.  Canning's  side  of  the 
question,  although  we  have  a  suspicion  that  he  does  not  love  us  Americans 
with  quite  all  his  heart.  The  general  tenor  of  his  political  sentiments, 
especially  so  far  as  they  regard  the  state  of  the  world,  and  the  cause  of 
liberal  opinions,  and  free  governments,  is,  of  course,  highly  acceptable  and 
gratifying  to  us  republicans.  For  one,  however,  I  regret  the  secession  of 
some  of  the  ministers  who  have  retired,  and  I  suppose  you  must  also. 
Among  them  is  Mr.  Peel,  who  seems  to  have  established  a  high  character, 
as  a  man  of  useful  and  solid  talents.  I  feel  pain  also  that  Lord  Eldon 
should  not  otherwise  have  terminated  his  long  career.  Perhaps  something 
of  the  professional  feeling  mingles  in  my  regrets,  on  his  case,  for  I  confess 
I  have  the  most  profound  admiration  for  his  judicial  character.  Nothing 
in  your  prints  has  disgusted  me  more  than  the  fierceness  of  some,  and  the 
wantonness  of  others,  of  the  innumerable  attacks  on  the  character  of  the 
ex-chancellor.  Of  Lord  Bathurst  I  know  nothing,  and  of  Lord  Westmore 
land  I  suppose  there  is  not  much  to  be  known,  except  that  he  is  a  peer,  a 
respectable  person,  and  with  powerful  influence  of  property  and  connection. 
These  noble  lords,  I  suppose,  could  be  spared,  if  such  were  their  pleasure ; 
but  I  should  think  it  would  have  been  desirable  that  the  Duke  of  Welling 
ton  should  have  remained.  Of  course,  I  am  a  very  incompetent  judge,  but 
I  must  say  I  have  seen  no  proofs  of  that  incapacity  which  some  of  your 
journals  charge  upon  the  duke,  in  regard  to  the  discharge  of  official 
duties.  He  does  not  appear  to  me  to  be  a  weak  man,  and  I  think  his 
speech  in  the  House  of  Lords  made  out  a  better  case  than  was  presented 
by  any  of  his  seceding  colleagues.  At  any  rate,  considering  his  un 
equalled  military  achievements,  in  hours  of  peril  and  darkness,  your  coun 
trymen,  many  of  them,  will  regret  an  arrangement  which  appears  to  place 
him  out  of  the  favor  of  the  crown. 

"  I  congratulate  you  most  heartily,  my  dear  sir,  on  your  own  accession 
to  office,  and  the  career  that  seems  so  auspiciously  opening  before  you. 
I  have  looked  after  you  in  the  debates,  but  have  seen  little  of  you  this 
session.  Our  dates  are  now  only  to  the  13th  June.  We  do  not  know  yet 
what  the  Lords  have  done  with  the  Corn  Law,  and  perhaps  the  Lord  only 
knows  what  they  may  do. 

"  Since  you  last  heard  from  me,  we  have  become  involved  in  a  very 
warm  canvass  for  the  next  presidency.  General  Jackson's  friends  have 
made,  and  are  still  making,  very  great  efforts  to  place  him  in  the  chair. 
He  is  a  good  soldier,  and  I  believe  a  very  honest  man,  but  some  of  us  think 
him  wholly  unfit  for  the  place  to  which  he  aspires.  Military  achievement, 
however,  is  a  very  visible  and  palpable  merit,  and  on  this  account  the 
general  is  exceedingly  popular  in  some  of  the  States.  The  election  will 


304  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIV. 

be  close,  though  my  present  belief  is  that  Mr.  Adams  will  be  again 
elected. 

"  The  good  people  here  have  seen  fit  to  transfer  me  from  the  House  of 
Representatives  to  the  Senate.  This  was  not  according  to  my  wishes,  but 
a  state  of  things  has  arisen  which,  in  the  judgment  of  friends,  rendered  the 
measure  expedient,  and  I  yielded  to  their  will.  I  do  not  expect  to  find 
my  situation  so  agreeable  as  that  which  I  left.  Mr.  Gorham,  a  highly 
respectable  man,  who  was  also  my  predecessor,  succeeds  to  my  place  as 
Representative  from  this  city.  Our  next  session,  we  fear,  will  be  stormy. 
There  is  nothing  new  of  an  exciting  character,  either  in  our  foreign  rela 
tions,  or  our  domestic  condition ;  but  the  pendency  of  the  President's 
election  is  likely  enough  to  produce  heats,  as  it  has  already  created  parties 
in  both  Houses  of  Congress. 

"  Your  excellent  friend,  the  Judge,  is  very  well :  I  believe  he  has  recently 
written  you.  He  always  speaks  of  you  with  great  regard  and  kindness. 

"  We  have  heard,  my  dear  sir,  that  you  are  soon  to  cease  writing  your 
self  bachelor.  If  this  be  true,  it  is  another  topic  on  which  we  all  send  you 
our  congratulations.  Mrs.  Webster  accepts  the  tender  of  your  remem 
brance  with  pleasure,  and  bids  me  reciprocate  respect  and  good  wishes 
from  her. 

"  Let  us  not  be  forgotten  by  your  fellow-travellers  in  America,  but  give 
them  our  regards,  as  you  may  see  them.  I  shall  send  you  a  little  package 
of  such  things  as  may  be  most  likely  to  interest  you ;  and,  in  the  hope  of 
hearing  from  you  ere  long, 

"I  am,  dear  sir, 

"  Most  truly  yours, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTEK. 
"  J.  E.  Denison,  Esq., 

"  2  Portman  Square,  London. 

"  Your  new  chancellor,  Lord  Lyndhurst,  was  born  in  this  town,  and 
christened  in  Trinity  Church  July  or  August,  1772.  His  mother  was  a 
direct  descendant  from  one  of  the  first  comers,  viz.,  one  of  the  company  of 
the  May  Flower,  landed  on  Plymouth  Rock,  December  22,  1620.  So  you 
see  there  is  a  little  of  the  blood  of  the  Puritans  in  him.  Being  at  Ply 
mouth  the  other  day,  their  village  antiquarian  gave  me  this  last  part  of 
the  information." 

But  the  honor  which  had  come  to  Mr.  "Webster  by  the  general 
voice  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts,  and  with  the  approbation  of 
the  whole  country,  was  not  to  be  shared  by  her  who  had  been  the 
proud  and  happy  partner  of  all  his  advances  in  public  considera 
tion,  and  who  had  adorned  every  circle,  private  or  official,  into 
which  he  had  conducted  her,  since  the  day  when  their  lives  were 
united  in  a  little  New-Hampshire  village.  In  the  summer  of 
182T,  Mrs.  Webster's  health  had  not  been  good,  but  she  had 


1827.]  ILLNESS   OF  MRS.  WEBSTER.  305 

apparently  been  restored  by  the  air  of  Sandwich,  where  they 
had  passed  several  weeks.  When  they  left  Boston  in  the  latter 
part  of  November,  to  proceed  to  Washington,  she  was  again 
far  from  well.  Still,  it  was  not  then  imagined  that  she  was 
suffering  from  a  fatal  malady.  The  journey  to  New  York 
increased  her  debility,  and  on  their  arrival  in  this  city,  a  con 
sultation  by  Dr.  Post  and  Dr.  Perkins  resulted  in  a  very  un 
favorable  opinion  of  the  case.  Its  progress  to  the  sad  termina 
tion,  the  alternations  of  hope  and  discouragement,  the  patient 
resignation  of  the  sufferer,  and  the  bearing  of  him  who  was  to 
be  thus  bereaved,  are  brought  vividly  before  us  in  the  corre 
spondence  of  those  two  trying  months  of  December  and  January : 

[TO  MB.  PAIGE.] 

"NEW  YOEK,  December  5,  7  P.  M.,  1827. 

"  DEAR,  WILLIAM  :  I  must  now  write  you  more  fully  upon  the  afflicting 
state  of  Mrs.  Webster's  health.  Dr.  Post,  a  very  eminent  physician  and 
surgeon,  has  to-day  been  called  into  consultation  with  Dr.  Perkins.  Their 
opinion,  I  ain  distressed  to  say,  is  far  from  favorable.  I  believe  they  will 
recommend  her  return  to  Boston  as  soon  as  convenient.  They  seem  to 
think  that  it  is  very  uncertain  how  fast  or  how  slow  may  be  the  progress 
of  the  complaint ;  but  they  hold  out  faint  hopes  of  any  cure.  I  hope  I 
may  be  able  to  meet  the  greatest  of  all  earthly  afflictions  with  firmness, 
but  I  need  not  say  that  I  am  at  present  quite  overcome.  I  have  not  com 
municated  to  Mrs.  Webster  what  the  physicians  think.  That  dreadful 
task  remains.  She  will  receive  the  information,  I  am  sure,  as  a  Chris 
tian  ought.  Under  present  circumstances,  I  should  be  very  glad  if  you 
could  come  here,  although  I  would  not  wish  you  to  put  yourself  to  too 
much  inconvenience.  I  should  be  very  glad  myself  to  go  to  Washington, 
though  it  were  but  for  a  single  day,  but  I  should  not  do  that  unless,  in  the 
mean  time,  Mrs.  Webster  should  be  on  her  return.  I  shall  now  make  no 
move  until  I  hear  from  you  in  answer  to  this  letter.  If  you  come  on,  I 
think  the  best  way  will  be  to  take  the  mail  stage-coach,  with  the  chance 
of  finding  an  evening  boat  at  New  Haven.  You  must  let  Fletcher  l  know, 
without  alarming  him  too  much,  that  his  mother's  health  is  precarious, 
and  that  she  will  probably  return  home.  I  am  not  yet  able  to  write,  as 
you  see,  though  I  think  I  am  getting  better. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

"  P.  S.  Eight  o'clock.— I  would  fain  hope  that  the  foregoing  is  of  too 
alarming  a  character.  I  have  since  seen  Mrs.  Webster,  and  told  her  the 

1  Daniel  Fletcher  Webster  had  now    continued  to  be  so  called  occasionally  by 
dropped  the  name  of  Daniel,  although  he     some  of  his  father's  friends. 
21 


306  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIV. 

doctors'  opinions.  She  says  she  still  has  courage.  If  you  can  come  on  so 
as  to  accompany  Mrs.  Webster  home,  it  will  not  be  necessary  that  you 
should  set  out  the  very  day  you  receive  this.  But  I  shall  not  myself  go 
to  Washington  until  I  hear  from  you  that  you  can  come  to  take  Mrs.  Web 
ster  home,  if  need  be." 

[TO   MR.    TICKNOR.] 

"  NEW  YORK,  December  9, 1827. — Sunday  Evening. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  We  have  received  your  very  kind  letter  of  the  7th 
(intended  to  be  brought  by  Mr.  Paige)  through  the  mail.  Mr.  Paige,  we 
suppose,  took  the  boat,  and  may  probably  be  kept  back  by  this  thick 
weather.  We  look  for  him  to-morrow. 

"  I  am  most  happy  to  say  that  the  physicians  to-day  think  Mrs.  Web 
ster's  case  is  apparently  letter  than  when  they  made  a  joint  examination 
three  days  ago.  She  is  certainly  far  more  free  from  pain,  and,  in  all  re 
spects,  more  comfortable.  Yesterday,  I  wrote  an  urgent  letter  to  Dr. 
Warren  to  come  here,  and  see  her,  if  possible.  To-day,  she  consents  that 
that  request  may  be  withdrawn  for  the  present,  and  I  have  written  the 
doctor  accordingly.  Will  you  have  the  goodness  to  see  him,  or  send  him 
a  note,  on  receipt  of  this,  by  way  of  caution,  lest  Ms  letter  should  have 
happened  to  miscarry. 

"  Our  hope  now  is,  that  Mrs.  Webster,  by  staying  here  until  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Story  come  along,  may  then  be  able  to  go  with  them  to  Washington. 
At  any  rate,  we  think  she  must  stay  until  some  further  change,  as  rest, 
quiet,  and  repose,  seem  now  essential  to  her.  Will  you  have  the  goodness 
to  signify  this  state  of  things  to  Judge  Story  ?  I  hope  to  write  him  myself 
in  a  day  or  two  ;  but  writing  is,  at  present,  not  easy  to  me.  I  am,  how 
ever,  getting  along,  and  so  far  well  that  my  own  case  deserves  no  regard. 

'"Mrs.  Webster  desires  her  fervent  love  to  Mrs.  Ticknor,  and  her  very 
best  regards  to  yourself.  She  thanks  you  both  abundantly  for  your  kind 
ness  and  friendly  concern.  Pray,  make  my  best  remembrances  to  Mrs. 
Ticknor,  and  believe  me,  as  I  am  always, 

"  Yours  most  truly, 

"D.  WEBSTER. 

u  Mr.  Ticknor." 

[FROM  MR.  TICKNOR.] 

"  BOSTON,  December  10, 1827. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Your  packet,  covering  three  letters,  came  safely  yes 
terday  (Sunday).  The  one  addressed  to  Mr.  Paige,  and  marked  private, 
was  carried  home  by  Daniel,  who  locked  it  up  unopened ;  the  one  to  Dr. 
Warren  was  sent  to  him  at  once ;  and  the  one  from  Dr.  Perkins  to  Mr. 
Paige  was  opened  by  Daniel,  who  afterward  brought  it  to  us.  The  last 
two  have  given  us  very  unwelcome  news  about  Mrs.  Webster ;  but  I  am 
happy  to  find  that  Dr.  Warren  looks  very  cheerfully  on  the  case,  though 


1827.]  ILLNESS  OF  MRS.  WEBSTER.  307 

that  is  not  the  professional  habit  of  his.  mind ;  and,  when  she  arrives  here, 
we  will  do  all  we  can  to  make  the  winter  comfortable  for  her.  It  would 
relieve  her  of  some  of  her  pain  at  this  moment  if  she  could  see  how  bright 
Daniel  looks  at  the  thought  of  her  coming  home,  and  of  his  being  able,  as 
he  expresses  it,  *  to  go  and  see  her  every  day.'  He  is  gone  this  morning 
to  let  Hannah 1  know  it,  and  I  advised  him  also  to  tell  Mrs.  Lekain,  that 
she  might  not  let  her  rooms,  which  are  now  empty,  until  your  intentions 
are  known.  Mr.  Paige's  visit  could  not  have  been  better  timed,  and, 
indeed,  kindness  like  his  is  as  sure  as  instinct. 

"  We  are  very  glad  to  hear,  from  Dr.  Perkins's  letter,  that  you  would 
probably  be  well  in  three  or  four  days  from  its  date.  Pray  send  us  notice, 
somehow  or  other,  how  you  get  on,  when  Mrs.  Webster  is  likely  to  come, 
and  all  other  matters  about  which  you  know  we  are  anxious  to  learn. 
Daniel  is  quite  well,  and  has  interested  us  very  much  by  the  delightful 
feeling  he  has  shown  under  his  late  anxiety,  and  his  present  happiness  at 
the  thought  of  seeing  his  mother  again. 

"  Remember  us  particularly  to  Mr.  Paige,  who  promised  to  write  to  us, 
and  remember  us  most  affectionately  to  Mrs.  Webster.  Can  we  do  any 
thing  to  prepare  for  her  coming  ?  Let  us  know,  and  it  shall  go  hard  but 
your  wishes  shall  be  fulfilled. 

"  Yours  very  faithfully, 

"  G.  T." 

[TO   MRS.    TICKNOR.] 

"NEW  YORK, December  11, 1827. 

"  MY  DEAR  MRS.  TICKNOR  :  Mr.  Paige  arrived  this  afternoon,  bringing 
your  very  kind  letter  to  Mrs.  Webster,  for  which  she  desires  to  return  you 
a  thousand  thanks.  It  would  fatigue  her  too  much  to  undertake  the 
answering  of  it  herself,  and,  therefore,  she  employs  me  in  the  grateful  ser 
vice.  It  is  very  good  in  you  and  your  husband  to  remember  us  in  our 
unfortunate  detention  here,  and  to  give  us  so  much  sympathy  for  the  causes 
which  have  produced  it.  I  wrote  Mr.  Ticknor  the  evening  before  last. 
Yesterday,  Mrs.  Webster  continued  better,  in  a  degree  answering  to  the 
increased  hopes  of  the  physicians.  She  thinks,  however,  that  she  must 
have  taken  some  little  cold,  as  her  limb  has  been  uneasy  and  felt  stiff  to 
day,  and  she  has  at  times  had  very  severe  pain.  She  hopes  that  she  shall 
sleep  to-night,  and  be  better  again  to-morrow.  She  is  indeed  very  sick, 
and  suffers  much.  Her  spirits  are,  however,  pretty  good,  and  she  bears  all 
with  great  fortitude  and  patience.  She  is  much  gratified  to  see  her  brother.1 

"  As  for  me,  I  am  yet  in-doors,  but  am  tolerably  well.  If  I  felt  like 
leaving  Mrs.  Webster,  I  could  be  moving  along  slowly  toward  Washington, 
but  I  shall  wait  a  little  longer,  in  the  hope  of  leaving  her  more  comfort 
able.  At  any  rate,  I  should  return  immediately,  unless  a  decidedly  favor 
able  change  should  take  place  in  her  condition. 

1  A  favorite  servant.  2  Mr.  Paige. 


308  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

"Mrs.  Webster  has  also  letters  from  Mrs.  Hale  and  Eliza.  Will  you 
send  them  word  that  I  will  write  them  to-morrow  and  next  day,  instead 
of  this  evening ;  so  that  you  may  hear  from  us  daily.  This  is  a  poor 
apology  I  have  for  not  answering  the  letters  of  such  friends  immediately, 
but  I  am  not  yet  so  free  from  my  complaint  as  to  make  writing  entirely 
easy.  The  children  are  well,  and  pray  papa  to  send  their  love  to  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Ticknor  and  little  Anna. 

"  I  am,  my  dear  lady,  with  most  true  regard,  yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"  Mrs.  Ticknor." 

On  the  13th  of  December,  the  symptoms  were  so  far  favor 
able,  that  Mr.  Webster  felt  justified  in  proceeding  to  Washing 
ton,  leaving  Mrs.  Webster  in  the  care  of  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Perkins, 
in  their  own  house,  and  surrounded  by  other  affectionate  and 
devoted  friends. 

[TO  MB.   EZEKIEL  WEBSTER.] 

"WASHINGTON,  December  17, 1827. 

"  DEAR  EZEKIEL  :  I  arrived  here  but  last  night,  and  have  to  say  that  I 
left  my  wife  sick  at  New  York.  Her  complaint,  which  is  partly  local,  has 
been  of  some  time  standing,  but  we  did  not  think  much  of  it  till  lately. 
I  fear  now  it  is  dangerous.  She  was  much  more  comfortable  when  I  left 
New  York  than  she  had  been  for  a  fortnight ;  but  whether  permanently 
better,  I  know  not.  Mr.  Paige  is  now  there  with  her,  at  Dr.  Perkins's. 
If  she  should  get  so  well  as  to  be  able  to  travel,  I  shall  go  back  for  her. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  she  grow  worse,  I  must  go  and  stay  with  her.  I 
know  not  how  Providence  will  dispose  of  this  threatening  case ;  but  at 
present  it  fills  me  with  the  keenest  anxiety. 

"  I  find  here  two  letters  from  you,  and  have  received  another  to-day. 
As  soon  as  I  have  been  here  long  enough  to  learn  what  is  the  state  of 
things,  I  will  write  you  on  political  matters. 
"  I  find  our  friends  here  not  despairing. 

"  Yours  as  ever, 

"D.  WEBSTER." 

[TO  JUDGE   STORY.] 

"WASHINGTON,  December  18, 1827. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR:  Yours  of  the  13th,  addressed  to  New  York,  has  fol 
lowed  me  hither.  My  own  health  was  so  far  restored,  that,  on  Thursday, 
the  13th,  I  ventured  to  set  forth,  and  arrived  here  Sunday  evening,  the 
16th,  without  inconvenience,  and  with  far  better  health  than  I  had  when  I 
left  New  York.  I  do  not  now  write  myself  an  invalid. 

"  I  left  Mrs.  Webster  at  New  York.  Her  health  was  bad,  though  better 
than  it  had  been.  I  know  not  whether  you  are  acquainted  with  the  nature 


1827.]  ILLNESS  OF  MRS.  WEBSTER.  309 

of  her  complaint ;  though  Dr.  Warren  or  Mr.  Ticknor  will  readily  explain 
it  to  you.1  My  last  letter,  December  16th,  says  she  is,  on  the  whole,  '  "better 
than  at  any  time  before  since  she  came  to  New  York.'  I  am  still  in  great 
hopes  of  her  being  able  to  join  me  here.  Mr.  Paige  is  now  with  her,  and 
will  stay  till  Christmas.  If  she  should  be  able  to  travel,  I  expect  to  go 
for  her,  and  bring  her  along.  I  desired  Mr.  Paige  to  keep  you  informed. 

"Our  rooms  I  found  all  ready,  and  in  order;  and,  notwithstanding 
Mrs.  Webster's  illness,  they  will  be  kept  for  her,  and  for  you  and  Mrs. 
Story.  Our  good  landlady  has  done  all  in  her  power  to  prepare  for  us ; 
and,  if  my  poor  wife  had  health,  I  should  look  forward  to  a  happy  session. 
And,  as  it  is,  I  hope  for  the  best.  You  say  you  shall  set  out  by  the  29th. 
I  have  given  that  information  this  morning  to  Mr.  Silsbee's  and  Mr.  Crown- 
inshield's  families,  and  they  hope  only  that  it  may  be  earlier.  I  am  sure 
Mrs.  Story  will  find  herself  pleasantly  situated  here.  As  to  political  affairs, 
I  have  not  been  here  long  enough  to  learn  much.  I  find  our  friends  not 
discouraged.  Virginia  appears  to  be  showing  great  strength  for  the 
Administration,  and  many  hopes  are  entertained  of  her  final  vote  that  way. 
The  weather  has  been  so  bad,  I  have  as  yet  seen  very  few  persons  since  I 
came  here. 

"  I  am  glad  Mason  succeeded  in  the  Argonaut.    It  is  a  good  cause, 

whatever  Judge  P may  think  of  it,  and  must  finally  prevail.    It  would 

not  give  rise  to  a  serious  doubt  in  any  other  part  of  the  Union.  At  least,  I 
think  so. 

"  I  shall  write  you  again  shortly ;  and,  in  the  mean  time,  am,  with  all 
my  heart, 

"  Yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTEB. 

"  P.  S. — Remember  my  regards  to  Mrs.  Story." 


[TO   MB.   PAIGE.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  December  25,  Christmas,  Noon,  1827. 

"  DEAR  WILLIAM  :  Your  letter  of  Sunday  has  this  moment  reached  me, 
in  which  you  say  Mrs.  Webster  would  be  glad  if  it  should  be  quite  con 
venient  for  me  that  I  would  come  to  New  York  to  meet  Judge  Story  ;  and 
I  certainly  shall  do  so.  I  cannot  go  for  a  day  or  two,  because  my  cold  is 
too  severe  ;  but  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  my  setting  off  so  soon  as  I  am 
quite  well.  Judge  Story  wrote  me  that  he  should  probably  set  out  about 
the  29th,  which  is  next  Saturday. 

"  Possibly  I  may  not  leave  here  before  Monday,  the  31st ;  but,  even 
then,  I  shall  be  in  New  York  as  soon  as  the  Judge.  On  receipt  of  this  I 
will  thank  you  to  write  me,  saying  whether  Mrs.  Webster  wishes  me  to 
bring  any  of  hers  or  the  children's  things  along  with  me.  Your  letter,  if 
written  on  Friday  morning,  will  be  here  on  Sunday,  so  that,  if  I  happen 
to  stay  till  Monday,  I  shall  get  it.  Probably  I  shall  go  off  before  Mon- 

1  Mrs.  Webster's  disease  was  a  tumor. 


310  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

day ;  this  depends  a  little  as  well  on  the  weather  and  the  state  of  the 
public  conveyances  as  on  my  getting  rid  of  my  cold. 

"  I  hope,  if  it  be  not  too  inconvenient,  you  will  stay  till  I  come,  and 
then  we  can  talk  about  Grace's  going  to  Boston  or  Washington.  The  tone 
of  your  letters,  for  three  or  four  days,  has  been  so  much  more  favorable 
than  before,  that  I  feel  encouraged.  It  will  be  dull  for  her,  I  fear,  to 
be  left  by  me  again,  after  you  are  gone ;  but,  then,  I  must  come  here, 
dispatch  some  few  things,  and  return  to  her  again.  I  shall  let  no  busi 
ness,  public  or  private,  prevent  my  attention  to  her,  as  the  first  duty. 

"  My  cold  is  better  to-day ;  but  still  I  am  not  quite  well.  Indeed,  so 
much  of  rheumatism,  and  then  so  severe  a  cold,  have  rather  reduced  this 
corporeal  system  of  mine  to  some  little  degree  of  weakness.  Two  or  three 
days  of  good  weather,  which  I  know  not  when  we  shall  see  again,  would 
do  me  a  great  deal  of  good. 

"  You  will,  of  course,  send  this  to  Grace,  as  I  shall  not  write  another 
to-day. 

"  Yours  always  truly, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"  P.  S. — Again  to-morrow. 

"  My  Christmas  dinner  is  a  handful  of  magnesia  and  a  bowl  of  gruel." 


[TO  MK.  MASON.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  December  26, 1827. 

"  MY  DEAR  FRIEND  :  I  cannot  write  you  now  a  political  letter,  but 
must  tell  you  something  about  me  and  mine.  I  came  here  the  17th,  pretty 
free  from  rheumatism,  but  have  since  had  a  violent  and  obstinate  cold, 
which  finally  has  brought  me  to  keep  house.  It  is  now,  I  think,  better  ; 
but,  it  will  be  two  or  three  days  before  I  shall  be  well  again,  at  best.  Mrs. 
Webster,  as  you  know,  I  left  in  New  York,  quite  sick.  She  has  been  per 
haps,  on  the  whole,  from  the  time  of  my  departure  to  the  date  of  my  last 
letter,  a  good  deal  more  comfortable  and  free  from  pain  than  for  the  fort 
night  I  was  in  New  York.  I  cannot  say  that  her  substantial  cause  of 
illness  is  better,  but  Mr.  Paige  writes  on  the  23d  that  he  thinks  more  favor 
ably  of  the  future  progress  and  final  result  of  the  complaint  than  I  did, 
when  I  left  New  York.  It  is  a  tumor  of  rather  anomalous  character,  and 
the  best  surgeons  look  upon  it  with  much  fear  of  consequences.  It  seems 
to  have  a  tendency  to  break  out ;  this  they  dread,  and  try  to  disperse  it, 
although  its  real  character,  perhaps,  can  only  be  fully  known  when  that 
shall  take  place.  I  would  not  alarm  myself  or  my  friends  unnecessarily ; 
but,  to  say  the  truth,  my  dear  sir,  I  fear  the  worst.  I  shall  leave  here,  if  I 
am  well  enough,  on  Saturday,  for  New  York.  There  I  expect  to  meet  the 
Judge  and  Mrs.  Story.  Whether  I  shall  return  hither  with  her,  or  stay  at 
New  York,  or  endeavor  to  get  Mrs.  Webster  home,  must  be  decided  by  the 
state  of  things  which  I  shall  find  existing  when  I  get  there.  If  it  should 
be  probable,  which  the  surgeons  somewhat  incline  to  suppose,  that  my 


1828.]  ILLNESS   OF  MRS.  WEBSTER.  311 

wife  may  remain  for  considerable  time  without  essential  change,  I  do  not 
see  that  the  superior  duty  of  being  with  her  must  not  lead  to  the  vacation 
of  the  situation  which  I  fill  here.    I  should  be  very  glad  to  hear  from  you, 
directed  to  New  York,  care  of  Dr.  Perkins,  Fulton  Street. 
"  I  am,  dear  sir, 

"  Most  truly  yours, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 


[TO  MB.   SILSBEE,  HIS   COLLEAGUE   IN  THE   SENATE.] 

"  NEW  YORK,  January  4, 1828. 

"Mr  DEAR  SIR:  I  arrived  here  yesterday  at  eleven  o'clock,  after  a 
very  tolerable  journey,  and  without  having  added  any  thing  to  my  cold. 
Indeed,  I  think  it  is  better  than  when  I  left  Washington. 

"  I  find  Mrs.  Webster  more  comfortable,  on  the  whole,  than  I  expected. 
She  has  now  enjoyed  more  rest  and  repose,  and  more  freedom  from  pain, 
for  three  days  together,  than  in  any  equal  time  since  we  came  here  six 
weeks  ago.  She  has  lost  flesh  since  I  left  her,  however,  and  is  now  feeble. 

"  As  to  the  original  cause  of  her  illness,  I  do  not  know  exactly  what  to 
think  of  it.  Some  symptoms  are  certainly  a  little  more  favorable.  I  can 
not  help  getting  a  little  new  hope,  on  the  whole,  though  I  fear  I  build  on 
a  slight  foundation. 

"  I  find  here  Judge  Story  and  his  wife.  They  are  in  very  good  health. 
He  has  not  looked  so  well  for  a  long  time.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  get  him 
out  of  his  study.  They  set  off  this  afternoon,  being  anxious  to  get  over 
the  Chesapeake  before  the  boat  stops.  They  will  take  possession  of  the 
rooms  at  Mrs.  Mclntyre's,  where  I  hope  to  join  them  soon.  Mr.  Paige 
went  to  Boston  yesterday.  As  soon  as  he  shall  be  able  to  return,  which  I 
think  will  be  in  a  few  days,  I  shall  return  to  Washington,  if  Mrs.  Webster 
remains  as  comfortable  as  at  present. 

"  I  am,  my  dear  sir,  with  most  true  regard  yours, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

"  P.  S.— Mr.  Clay's  address  seems  to  meet  with  universal  approbation." 

[TO   MR.  EZEKIEL    WEBSTER.] 

"  NEW  YORK,  January  8, 1828. 

"  DEAR  EZEKIEL  :  I  came  here  from  Washington  on  Friday,  the  4th. 
There  are  so  many  friends  to  write  to  on  the  subject  of  Mrs.  Webster's 
health,  that  I  fear  I  may  neglect  some ;  and  hardly  know  how  long  it  is 
since  I  wrote  you.  William,  however,  has  written  occasionally  to  his 
friends  in  your  vicinity. 

"  I  cannot  say  any  thing  new  in  regard  to  Mrs.  Webster.  Her  case  is 
most  serious.  It  is  one  of  rare  occurrence,  no  physician  here,  but  Dr.  Per 
kins,  thinking  he  ever  saw  one  like  it.  The  tumor  has  not  yet  broken  out, 
but  threatens  it,  and  will,  doubtless,  soon.  Its  character  will  be  then  better 


312  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

known  and  I  fear  the  worst.  Dr.  Nathan  Smith,  Dr.  Physick,  etc.,  have  been 
written  to  for  opinions  and  advice  ;  and  I  have  written  an  urgent  letter  to 
Dr.  Warren  to  come  here.  After  all,  the  case  is  very  much  out  of  the  reach 
of  medical  application  or  surgical  aid.  .  .  .  Internal  remedies  do  not  reach 
it,  and  external  applications  have  little  effect.  The  result  must  be  left  with 
Providence ;  but  you  must  be  prepared  to  learn  the  worst.  For  three  or  four 
days  she  has  been  more  free  from  pain  than  for  some  time  before ;  but  yes 
terday  she  was  a  good  deal  distressed  again.  William  Paige  went  home 
the  day  I  came.  He  thinks  he  can  return  in  a  week  or  ten  days,  and  stay 
till  I  make  a  visit  to  the  court  at  Washington,  if  Mrs.  Webster  should  be 
so  as  to  allow  of  my  leaving  her.  You  will,  of  course,  not  alarm  your  wife 
and  Mrs.  Kelly,  and  Nancy,  too  much  in  regard  to  Grace.  There  is  yet  a 
hope ;  but  I  have  thought  it  best  to  tell  you  my  real  opinion. 

"My  own  health  has  suffered  from  continual  colds  and  catarrhs. 
Though  not  quite  well  even  yet,  I  have  no  dangerous  or  bad  symptoms. 
I  feel  no  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  or  soreness  of  the  chest,  nor  any  febrile 
symptoms.  An  epidemic  cold  is  all  about  here,  and  I  partake  in  it ;  but 
it  appears  to  be  getting  better,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  two  or  three 
clear  days  would  finish  it.  Julia  and  Edward  are  pretty  well ;  they  go  to 
school.  Grace  and  the  children  desire  their  best  love  to  Mrs.  Webster  and 
the  little  girls,  as  well  as  to  you. 

"  Yours  always  truly, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER." 


[TO  MB.  MASON.] 

"  NEW  YORK,  January  15, 1823. 

"  MY  DEAB  SIB  :  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  and  friendly  letter,  and 
wish  I  could  feel  justified  in  confirming  those  favorable  hopes  which  your 
friendship  leads  you  to  form  in  regard  to  my  sick  wife.  Would  to  God  I 
were  able  to  encourage  my  own  hopes,  and  yours  also  !  But  I  fear, 
greatly  fear,  that  Providence  has  not  so  ordered  it.  Although  she  is 
better  one  day  than  another,  that  is,  more  comfortable,  more  free  from 
severe  pain,  yet  I  do  not  see  any  material  change  in  that  which  has  occa 
sioned  her  illness.  .  .  . 

"  After  all,  my  dear  sir,  we  have  a  ray  of  hope.  I  try  to  keep  up  my 
courage,  and  to  strengthen  hers  ;  but  it  is  due  to  our  friendship  that  I  tell 
you  the  whole  truth.  I  have  endeavored  to  prepare  myself  for  that  event, 
of  all  others  the  most  calamitous  to  me  and  to  my  children. 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  advice  as  to  myself,  and  shall  certainly  follow 
it.  In  all  probability  I  shall  stay  here  for  some  time  yet.  I  fear  circum 
stances  will  not  be  such  as  that  I  can  leave,  even  after  Mr.  Paige  comes, 
nor  am  I  very  anxious  to  do  so.  There  seems  nothing  important  in  Con 
gress,  and  I  must  try  to  make  some  arrangement  of  my  business  in  court. 

"  My  health,  though  not  entirely  confirmed,  is  daily  improving.  I  have 
the  remnant  of  an  epidemical  cold,  a  little  loose  cough  and  catarrh ;  no 


1828.]  DEATH  OF  MRS.  WEBSTER.  313 

soreness  of  breast,  nor  inflammation  of  lungs,  nor  any  feverish  tendency. 
Be  assured,  my  dear  sir,  I  shall  take  all  possible  care  of  my  own  health. 

"  Ten  o'clock,  p.  M. — Mrs.  Webster  is  now  asleep,  and  is  free  from  severe 
pain,  but  breathes  not  easily.  She  is  a  good  deal  inclined  to  sleep.  I 
leave  space  to  tell  you  how  she  may  be  in  the  morning. 

"  Wednesday  morning,  eight  o'clock. — Mrs.  Webster  passed  rather  a  com 
fortable  night.  She  had  less  cough  than  I  apprehended,  and  seems  calm 
and  quiet  this  morning.  She  thinks  she  breathes  a  little  easier  than  yes 
terday.  Her  voice  is  faint,  but  natural  in  its  tones. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTEB." 

[TO  MK.  EZEKIEL   WEBSTER.] 

"  NEW  YORK,  January  17, 1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  BROTHER  :  I  cannot  give  you  any  favorable  news  respecting 
my  wife.  She  is  no  better,  and  I  fear  is  daily  growing  weaker.  She  is 
now  exceedingly  feeble.  Dr.  Perkins  thinks  she  has  altered  very  much  the 
last  three  or  four  days. 

"  The  prospect  nearly  confounds  me ;  but  I  hope  to  meet  the  event 
with  submission  to  the  will  of  God. 

"  I  expect  Mr.  Paige  to-morrow  morning.  He  or  I  will  write  you  again 
soon. 

"  Yours  affectionately, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

[TO  MR.  E.  WEBSTER.] 

"  Monday  Morning,  January  21. 

"DEAR  BROTHER:  Mrs.  Webster  still  lives,  but  is  evidently  near  her 
end.  We  did  not  expect  her  continuance  yesterday,  from  hour  to  hour. 

"  Yours  affectionately, 

"D.  W." 

[TO  MR.  MASON.] 

"  Monday  Morning,  nine  o'clock. 

"My  DEAR  SIR:  Mrs.  Webster  still  lives,  but  cannot  possibly  remain 
long  with  us.     We  expected  her  decease  yesterday  from  hour  to  hour. 
"  I  received  Mrs.  Mason's  letter,  but  could  not  communicate  it. 

"  Yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

[TO   MR.  EZEKIEL   WEBSTER.] 

"  Monday,  quarter-past  two  o'clock. 

"  DEAR  BROTHER  :  Poor  Grace  has  gone  to  heaven.  She  has  now  just 
breathed  her  last  breath. 


314  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIV. 

u  I  shall  go  with  her  forthwith  to  Boston,  and,  on  receipt  of  this,  I  hope 
you  will  come  there  if  you  can. 

"  I  shall  stay  there  some  days.    May  God  bless  you  and  yours ! 

"D.  WEBSTER." 


[TO   MR.  TICKNOR.] 

"  Quarter-past  two  o'clock,  p.  M.,  Monday,  January  21, 1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR :  All  is  over.    My  blessed  wife  has  just  expired.    With 
the  leave  of  Providence,  I  shall  soon  see  you,  and  receive  your  condolence. 
"  May  God  bless  you. 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 
"  Mr.  Ticknor." 

Mr.  Ticknor  observes  in  liis  Reminiscences : 

"  Mr.  Webster  came  to  Mr.  George  Blake's  in  Summer  Street,  where  we 
saw  him  both  before  and  after  the  funeral.  He  seemed  completely  broken 
hearted.  At  the  funeral,  when,  with  Mr.  Paige,  I  was  making  some  ar 
rangements  for  the  ceremonies,  we  noticed  that  Mr.  Webster  was  wearing 
shoes  that  were  not  fit  for  the  wet  walking  of  the  day,  and  I  went  to  him 
and  asked  him  if  he  would  not  go  in  one  of  the  carriages.  '  No,'  he  said, 
'  my  children  and  I  must  follow  their  mother  to  the  grave  on  foot.  I  could 
swim  to  Charlestown.'  A  few  minutes  afterward,  he  took  Julia  and  Daniel 
in  either  hand,  and  walked  close  to  the  hearse  through  the  streets  to  the 
church  in  whose  crypt  the  interment  took  place.  It  was  a  touching  and 
solemn  sight.  He  was  excessively  pale." 

Mrs.  Webster's  remains  were  placed  in  a  tomb  belonging  to 
her  husband,  beneath  St.  Paul's  Church,  in  Boston,  with  those 
of  her  children,  Grace  and  Charles.  I  continue  the  correspond 
ence  which  followed  this  event : 


[FROM  JUDGE  STORY.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  27, 1828. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR:  I  received  in  the  course  of  the  mail  your  letter  an 
nouncing  the  melancholy  news  of  the  death  of  Mrs.  Webster.  It  has  sunk 
Mrs.  Story  and  myself  in  deep  affliction.  And,  prepared  as  we  were  for 
the  heavy  intelligence,  it  came  at  last  with  a  most  distressing  power  over 
our  minds.  We  do,  indeed,  most  sincerely  and  entirely,  from  our  whole 
hearts,  sympathize  with  you,  and  partake  largely  of  your  sorrows.  We 
have  long  considered  Mrs.  Webster  one  of  our  best  and  truest  friends,  and, 
indeed,  as  standing  to  us  almost  in  the  relation  of  a  sister.  We  have 
known  her  excellent  qualities,  her  kindness  of  heart,  her  generous  feelings. 


1828.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  315 

her  mild  and  conciliatory  temper,  her  warm  and  elevated  affections,  her 
constancy,  purity,  and  piety,  and  her  noble  disinterestedness,  and  her  ex 
cellent  sense.  Such  a  woman,  and  such  a  friend,  must  be  at  all  times  a 
most  severe  loss,  and  to  us,  at  our  age,  is  irreparable ;  we  can  scarcely  hope 
to  form  many  new  friendships,  and  our  hope,  our  dearest  hope,  was  to 
retain  what  we  had.  We  have  so  hoped  in  vain.  I  can  say  with  Young, 
in  deep  humiliation  of  soul : 

"  '  Our  dying  friends  come  o'er  us  like  a  cloud, 
To  damp  our  brainless  ardor,  and  abate 
That  glare  of  life,  which  sometimes  "blinds  the  wise.1 

"  Of  the  loss  to  you,  I  can  and  ought  to  say  nothing.  I  know  that, 
if  we  suffer,  your  sorrows  must  be  unspeakable.  And  I  can  only  pray  God 
to  aid  you  by  His  consolations,  and  to  suggest  to  you  that,  after  your  first 
agony  is  over,  her  virtues  and  your  own  admirable  devotion  to  her  cannot 
but  be  sources  of  the  most  soothing  recollection  to  you.  I  know  well  that 
we  may  do  mischief  by  intermeddling  with  a  heart  wounded  by  grief ;  and 
it  must  be  left  to  itself  to  recover  its  powers,  and  to  soften  its  anguish. 
What  some  of  us  think  of  the  dead,  you  may  read  in  the  National  Intelli 
gencer  of  Saturday.1 

"  In  going  to  Boston,  and  attending  the  funeral  obsequies,  I  entirely 
agree  with  your  own  judgment.  I  should  have  done  the  same,  under 
like  circumstances,  as  most  appropriate  to  my  own  feelings  and  to  pub 
lic  propriety.  We  have  in  spirit  followed  your  wife  to  the  grave  with 
you. 

"  I  do  not  urge  your  immediate  return  here.  But  yet,  having  been  a 
like  sufferer,  I  can  say  that  the  great  secret  of  comfort  must  be  sought,  so 
far  as  human  aid  can  go,  in  employment.  It  requires  effort  and  sacrifices, 
but  it  is  the  only  specific  remedy  against  unavailing  and  wasting  sorrow ; 
that  canker  which  eats  into  the  heart,  and  destroys  its  vitality.  If  you 

1  OBITUARY  (written  by  Mr.  Justice  and  a  large  intercourse  with  society; 
Story). — "  On  Monday  last,  at  New  York,  and  her  conversation  diffused  a  charm 
where  her  journey  to  Washington  was  which  belongs  only  to  the  purity  and  re- 
arrested  by  the  disease  that  terminated  finement  of  the  best  female  minds.  Her 
her  life,  Mrs.  Grace  Webster,  wife  of  the  life  was  filled  up  in  the  conscientious 
Hon.  Daniel  Webster,  of  the  Senate  of  discharge  of  duty :  in  devoted  attach- 
the  United  States.  The  death  of  this  ment  to  her  family  and  friends ;  in  deep, 
excellent  woman  has  spread  a  general  sincere,  and  unobtrusive  piety;  in  holi- 
gloom  among  her  numerous  friends,  ness  of  purpose  and  conduct ;  and,  in 
Few  persons  have  been  more  deserved-  affections  which,  beginning  in  this  world, 
ly  or  more  universally  beloved  ;  few  belong  also  to  eternity.  Such  a  life,  too 
have  possessed  qualities  more  attrac-  brief  indeed  for  our  happiness,  ought  to 
tive,  more  valuable,  or  more  elevating,  leave  nothing  by  its  close  but  regrets 
Her  manners  carried  with  them  a  win-  for  our  own  loss,  while  it  should  afford 
ning  grace  and  ease,  expressive  at  once  the  highest  consolations  from  the  con- 
of  benevolence  and  respect.  Her  heart  nections  which  it  adorned,  and  the  vir- 
was  open  to  every  call  of  human  afflic-  tues  which  it  illustrated.  To  her  hus- 
tion,  and  her  charity  was  of  that  Chris-  band  and  children,  we  too  painfully 
tian  power  which  blesses  them  that  give  know  that  the  loss  must  be  irrepar- 
and  them  that  take.  Her  talents,  natu-  able."— (National  Intelligencer  of  Janu- 
rally  fine,  had  been  cultivated  by  study  ary  26,  1828.) 


316  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIV, 

will,  therefore,  allow  me  to  advise,  it  would  be  that  you  should  return  here 
as  soon  as  you  can  gather  up  your  strength,  and  try  professional  and  pub 
lic  labors.  Endeavor  to  wear  off  that  spirit  of  despondency  which  you 
cannot  but  feel,  and  which  you  will  scarcely  feel  any  inclination  to  resist. 
Saying  this,  I  have  said  all  that  I  ought,  and  I  know  that  you  can  under 
stand  what  is  best,  better  than  I  can  prescribe. 

"  Mrs.  Story  desires  her  most  affectionate  regards  to  you  and  the  chil 
dren,  and  I  join  in  them,  being  always  affectionately 

"  Your  friend, 

"JOSEPH  STORY." 

[TO  DR.  PERKINS.] 

"  BOSTON,  Monday,  January  28, 1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  You  have  learned,  by  Mr.  Paige's  letter,  that  we 
reached  Boston  on  Friday  evening;  and,  on  Saturday,  committed  Mrs. 
Webster's  remains  to  the  tomb.  We  used  the  occasion  to  bring  into  our 
own  tomb  the  coffin  containing  the  remains  of  our  daughter  Grace,  who 
died  January  23,  1817.  My  dear  wife  now  lies  with  her  oldest  and  her 
youngest ;  and  I  hope  it  may  please  God,  when  my  appointed  hour  comes, 
that  I  may  rest  by  her  side. 

"  Mrs.  Bryant  came  immediately  to  see  me  and  the  children,  and  mani 
fests  her  kindest  sympathy  in  the  calamity  which  has  befallen  us.  She  is 
an  excellent  woman,  and  one  whom  Mrs.  Webster  very  much  regarded  and 
loved.  All  our  friends  have  received  us  with  a  sincerity  of  condolence 
and  sympathy  which  we  can  never  forget.  The  children  are  well.  Daniel 
will  resume  his  usual  residence  and  occupation  in  a  day  or  two.  Mrs.  Lee 
(Eliza  Buckminster),  Mrs.  Ticknor,  Mrs.  Hale,  Mrs.  Appleton,  and  others, 
have  offered,  in  the  most  friendly  manner,  to  take  care  of  Julia  and  Ed 
ward  for  the  winter.  We  have  not  yet  decided  how  we  shall  dispose  of 
them. 

"  I  pray  you  to  give  my  most  affectionate  regards  to  Mrs.  Perkins.  I 
never  can  express  how  much  I  feel  indebted  to  her  kindness  and  friend 
ship.  If  Mrs.  Webster  had  been  her  sister,  she  could  have  done  no  more. 

"  In  a  few  days,  I  intend  to  set  out  for  Washington.     If  there  should 
come  a  flight  of  snow,  so  as  to  make  sleighing,  I  shall  immediately  im 
prove  the  occasion  to  get  over  the  hills  to  New  Haven. 
"  I  am,  dear  sir,  most  truly, 

"  Yours  always, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

[TO  MR.  MASON.] 

"  BOSTON,  January  29, 1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  letter  of  yesterday.  It 
would  give  me  great  pleasure  to  see  you ;  but  I  do  not  expect  you  to 
make  a  journey  hither  at  this  season.  I  know  also  that  your  engagements 


1828.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  317 

must  be  pressing.  I  am,  at  present,  at  Mr.  Blake's,  with  the  children.  My 
brother  came  down  yesterday.  It  is  my  purpose  to  stay  till  toward  the 
end  of  this  week,  or  to  the  first  of  next,  according  to  the  weather,  and 
then  proceed  South.  My  own  health  is  pretty  good,  although  I  feel,  in 
some  measure,  fatigued  and  exhausted.  I  shall  travel  slowly,  and  must 
necessarily  stay  two  or  three  days  in  New  York. 

"As  to  my  children,  I  think  I  shall  dispose  of  them  in  this  town  for 
the  present,  without  inconvenience.  Daniel  is  perfectly  well  disposed  of 
where  he  is.  Mrs.  Lee  (Eliza  Buckminster)  lays  claim  to  Julia,  of  right, 
and  would  be  glad  of  Edward ;  also,  Mrs.  Ticknor,  Mrs.  Hale,  Mrs.  Apple- 
ton,  and  others,  have  kindly  offered  to  take  them.  I  feel  a  reluctance  to 
separate  these  two  little  ones,  but  still  incline  to  think  the  best  thing  will 
be  to  let  Julia  go  to  Mrs.  Lee's,  and  turn  Edward,  for  the  winter,  into  Mrs. 
Bale's  little  flock. 

"  As  far  as  I  have  thought  at  all  of  my  future  arrangements,  my  inclina 
tion  is  to  make  no  more  change  in  my  course  and  mode  of  life  than  the 
event  necessarily  produces. 

"  I  think  I  shall  leave  orders  to  have  the  furniture  put  up  in  the  house, 
with  the  view  of  taking  home  the  children  when  I  return,  and,  with  the 
aid  of  Mr.  Paige,  keeping  the  family  together.  Except,  perhaps,  that  it 
may  be  best  that  Julia  should  stay  principally  with  Eliza,  or  in  some  other 
family  where  there  is  a  lady.  Very  probably  both  the  little  children  may 
pass  the  summer  at  their  uncle's. 

"  I  pray  you  give  my  most  affectionate  remembrance  to  Mrs.  Mason. 
Mrs.  Webster  spoke  of  her  often,  and  always  with  the  strongest  sentiments 
of  esteem  and  affection.  Her  last  letter  was  received,  I  think,  before  Mrs. 
Webster's  death  ;  but  when  she  was  not  in  a  condition  to  read  it  or 
hear  it. 

"  In  regard  to  this  calamity,  my  dear  sir,  I  feel  that  every  thing  has 
conspired  to  alleviate,  as  far  as  possible,  the  effects  of  the  calamity  itself. 
All  was  done  that  could  be  done  ;  the  kindness  of  friends  had  no  bounds ; 
and  it  is  now  continued,  also,  toward  me  and  the  children.  The  manner 
of  the  death,  too,  was,  in  all  respects,  such  as  her  dearest  friends  would 
have  wished. 

"  Adieu,  my  dear  sir, 

"  Yours,  always  truly, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTEK." 

[TO  MR.  FLETCHER  WEBSTER.] 

"  SENATE-CHAMBER,  Tuesday,  February  17, 1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SON  ;  I  have  received  a  letter  from  you  to-day,  before  I  have 
found  time  to  answer  your  last.  That  gave  me  singular  pleasure,  as  it 
contained  a  very  gratifying  report  from  Mr.  Leverett.1  I  have  nothing 
more  at  heart,  my  dear  son,  than  your  success  and  welfare,  and  the  culti- 

1  Master  of  the  Latin  School,  Boston. 


318  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

vation  of  your  talents  and  virtues.  You  will  be,  in  the  common  course  of 
things,  coming  into  active  life,  when,  if  I  live  so  long,  I  shall  be  already 
an  old  man,  and  shall  have  but  little  left  in  life  but  my  children  and  their 
hopes  and  happiness.  In  contemplation  of  these  things,  I  look  with  the 
most  affectionate  anxiety  upon  your  progress,  considering  the  present  as  a 
most  critical  and  important  period  in  your  life. 

"  Such  reports,  as  that  last  received,  give  me  good  spirits ;  and,  I 
doubt  not,  my  dear  son,  that  the  consciousness  that  your  good  conduct 
and  respectable  progress  in  your  class,  and  among  your  fellows,  gives  me 
pleasure,  will  stimulate  your  affectionate  heart,  with  other  motives,  to 
earnest  and  assiduous  endeavors  to  excel.  I  pray  Heaven  to  bless  you  and 
prosper  you. 

"  At  present  my  time  is  exceedingly  occupied  between  the  Senate  and 
the  court,  and  I  suppose  it  will  continue  so  to  be  till  the  3d  of  March.  It 
is  very  cold  here ;  much  the  severest  winter  I  ever  experienced  at  "Wash 
ington. 

"  Yours  most  affectionately, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

[TO   ME.   PAIGE.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Suuday  Evening, ,  1828. 

"  DEAR  WILLIAM  :  I  found  divers  letters  of  yours  here  yesterday,  and 
have  another  to-day  ;  for  all  which  I  thank  you.  A  line  from  you,  as  often 
as  you  can  write  one,  will  always  give  me  pleasure  and  satisfaction.  I 
sometimes  feel  as  if  I  were  troubling  you  too  much  with  so  much  care  of 
the  children,  and  so  much  attention  to  my  concerns.  But  I  trust  you  will 
not  suffer  me  to  wear  out  your  patience  and  kindness.  Notwithstanding 
the  blessed  spirit,  that  has  so  long  been  the  common  bond  of  union  be 
tween  us,  is  now  on  earth  no  more,  you  will  ever  be  to  me  one  of  the  near 
est  and  dearest  objects  in  life ;  nearer  and  dearer,  indeed,  from  this  very 
calamity.  Enough ! 

"  I  find  Judge  Story  and  his  wife  very  well.  Mrs.  Story  has  had  the 
company  of  Mrs.  Lawrence,  and  has  not  been  therefore  lonely.  But,  alas  ! 
it  is  not  such  a  winter  as  she  promised  herself.  I  have  not  been  out  of 
the  house  to-day.  A  great  many  people  have  been  to  see  me.  To-mor 
row  I  shall  probably  go  into  court. 

"  Yours,  dear  William, 

"  Most  faithfully, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

[TO  MR.   PAIGE.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Wednesday  Evening, ,  1828. 

u  DEAR  WILLIAM  :  I  have  received  to-day  your  letter  of  Saturday, 
which  makes  me  feel  a  good  deal  better.  I  have  seldom  been  five  days 
before  without  hearing  from  home  ;  and,  although  I  have  lost  what 


1828.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  319 

mainly  made  home  dear  to  me,  there  is  yet  that  in  it  which  I  love 
more  than  all  things  else  in  the  world.  I  could  not  get  along  with 
out  cherishing  the  feeling  that  I  have  a  home,  notwithstanding  the  shock 
I  have  received.  You  must  try  to  make  the  children  write  when  you 
cannot,  so  that  I  may  hear  from  some  of  you ;  once  every  two  or  three 
days  at  least. 

"  This  morning  was  devoted  to  General  Brown's  funeral ;  and  I  went 
into  court  at  one  o'clock.  For  some  days  to  come,  indeed,  as  long  as  the 
court  continues,  I  expect  no  leisure.  Time  has  been  when  I  should  not 
have  cared  much  about  it ;  and,  as  it  is,  I  shall  get  through  somehow  or 
other. 

"  The  arrangement  you  suggested  some  time  ago,  as  to  the  children's 
all  dining  with  you  on  Sunday,  and  occasionally  with  our  other  friends, 
pleases  me  well.  I  hope  they  are  happy.  Edward,  I  am  sure,  is  as  well 
off  as  he  can  be  ;  and,  since  you  cannot  spare  him,  I  am  content  he  should 
remain  where  he  is. 

"  Riley's  trunk  is  here.  I  shall  send  it  the  very  first  opportunity.  He 
will  receive  it,  I  trust,  in  a  week  or  two.  I  am  sorry  to  hear  Mary  is  sick, 
and  hope  her  illness  will  not  be  of  long  duration. 

"  Remember  me  kindly  to  Mr.  Blake.  I  would  write  him,  if  I  had 
time,  to-night,  but  must  put  it  off  for  a  day  or  two. 

"  Give  my  love  to  all  the  children.    I  wish  I  had  one  of  them  here. 

"  Good-night. 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 


[TO  MR.  TICKNOR.J 

"WASHINGTON,  February  22, 1828,  in  Supreme  Court. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  find  myself  again  in  the  court,  where  I  have  been 
so  many  winters,  and  surrounded  by  such  men  and  things  as  I  have  usually 
found  here.  But  I  feel  very  little  zeal  or  spirit  in  regard  to  the  passing 
affairs.  My  most  strong  propensity  is  to  sit  down,  and  sit  still ;  and,  if  I 
could  have  my  wish,  I  think  the  writing  of  a  letter  would  be  the  greatest 
effort  I  should  put  forth  for  the  residue  of  the  winter.  I  suppose,  how 
ever,  that  a  sort  of  necessity  will  compel  me  to  be  here  for  ten  days  or  a 
fortnight,  and  to  appear  to  take  an  interest  in  the  business  of  the  court. 
My  own  health,  I  think,  is  a  good  deal  better  than  when  I  left  home.  In 
deed,  it  is  very  good,  and  I  have  nothing  to  complain  of  in  that  respect. 

"  The  Judge  and  Mrs.  Story  are  getting  along  very  well.  She  has 
complained  a  little  of  dyspepsia,  but  now  seems  to  be  well,  and  enjoys 
Washington  society  with  reasonable  relish.  They  dine  to-day  (birthday) 
at  the  President's. 

"  I  hear  that  my  children  are  frequent  visitors  at  your  house,  much  to 
their  gratification.  I  know,  my  dear  sir,  with  how  much  kindness  you 
and  Mrs.  Ticknor  treat  us  all ;  and  feel  how  greatly  we  must  lean  on  our 
friends  under  our  present  circumstances.  I  feel  a  much  greater  inclination, 


320  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

or,  to  speak  more  properly,  a  much  greater  necessity,  of  being  at  home 
than  ever  before ;  not  at  all  on  account  of  the  children  at  present,  as  I 
know  they  are  well  disposed  of,  but  for  my  own  comfort  and  solace.  There 
is  little  here  to  administer  that,  which  I  find  I  most  need.  But  I  did  not 
intend,  my  dear  sir,  to  write  you  a  gloomy  letter.  My  object  was  mainly 
to  notify  my  safe  arrival,  to  keep  myself  in  remembrance,  and  to  thank  you 
for  all  your  kind  deeds.  Both  you  and  Mrs.  Ticknor  are  persons  to  whom 
the  art  of  writing  is  known,  and  the  exercise  of  it  not  afflicting.  I  flatter 
myself,  therefore,  that  one  or  the  other  of  you  will  sometimes  favor  me 
with  a  few  lines.  I  pray  you  make  her  my  most  grateful  and  kind  remem 
brance.  Mention  me  also  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hale. 

"  Yours  ever  faithfully, 

"  DANL.  WEBSTEE. 
"G.  Ticknor." 

[TO  MRS.   LEE.] 

"WASHINGTON,  March  15, 1828. 

"  DEAR  ELIZA  :  I  return  you  Mr.  Parker's l  letter,  which  I  have  read, 
as  you  may  well  suppose,  with  great  pleasure.  Nothing  is  more  soothing 
and  balmy  to  my  feelings  than  to  dwell  on  the  recollection  of  my  dear 
wife,  and  to  hear  others  speak  of  her  who  knew  her  and  loved  her.  My 
heart  holds  on  by  this  thread,  as  if  it  were  by  means  of  it  to  retain  her  yet 
here.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Parker  were  always  kind  to  us,  and  are  among  those 
Portsmouth  friends  whom  time  and  distance  never  separated  from  our 
acquaintance  and  affection.  Mrs.  Webster  had  very  high  esteem  for  them 
both. 

"  I  hear  from  Mr.  Paige  and  from  Julia  and  from  Edward  that  you  are 
well.  Julia  has  told  me  all  about  your  party,  and  how  long  she  sat  up.  I 
hear  from  others,  as  well  as  herself,  that  she  is  happy  as  possible  under  the 
protection  of  your  care  and  kindness.  You  will  love  her,  I  know,  for  her 
mother's  sake,  and,  I  hope,  for  her  own  also  ;  and  I  trust  she  will  make 
herself  agreeable  to  your  husband.  You  are  kind  enough  to  say  that  con 
cern  for  Julia  need  not  lead  me  to  forbear  any  purpose  which  I  might 
otherwise  have  of  crossing  the  water.  It  would  be  unpleasant,  certainly, 
to  leave  the  children,  and  especially  a  little  girl  of  Julia's  age ;  but  I 
should  not  feel  uneasy  about  her  at  all  while  under  your  guardianship. 
There  are  other  considerations,  however,  which  are  well  to  be  weighed 
before  I  am  water-borne.  Even  if  what  you  allude  to  were  supposed  to  be 
at  my  own  option,  and,  however  desirable  it  might  be  in  itself,  times  and 
circumstances  may,  nevertheless,  be  such  as  '  give  me  pause.'  This  is  all  I 
can  say  about  it  at  present,  except  that  I  am  now  too  old  to  do  any  thing 
in  a  hurry.  I  believe  this  is  almost  the  only  time  I  have  alluded  to  the 
subject  to  any  one;  and  would  not  wish  to  be  quoted  as  having  said  one 
word  respecting  it. 

1  Rev.  Dr.  Parker,  a  clergyman   of     brilliant  wife,  who  is  again  mentioned, 
Portsmouth,  an  excellent  man,  with  a    post,  in  the  year  1848. 


1828.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  321 

"  Mrs.  Story  left  us  the  day  before  yesterday.  The  Judge  goes  in  a  day 
or  two.  I  shall  be  sorry  to  lose  him,  though  quite  willing  to  have  the 
court  break  up. 

"  I  have  a  very  kind  letter,  indeed,  from  Mrs.  Everett,  respecting  the 
name  of  her  youngest  daughter ;  I  wish  uncle  would  carry  Julia  out  to 
see  her. 

"  Is  your  husband  a  document-reader  ?  I  should  be  glad  to  send  him 
some  of  our  papers,  speeches,  etc.,  but  have  been  afraid  he  would  vote  it  a 
bore.  Pray  give  my  love  to  him ;  and  believe  me,  as 

"  Ever,  yours, 

"  DANL.  WEBSTER." 


[TO  MR.   HADDOCK.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  March  21, 1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  NEPHEW  :  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  and  affectionate 
letter,  and  assure  you  its  suggestions  are  all  in  accordance  with  my  own 
feelings.  It  does  not  appear  to  me  unreasonable  to  believe  that  the  Mend- 
ships  of  this  life  are  perpetuated  in  heaven.  Flesh  and  blood,  indeed,  can 
not  inherit  the  kingdom  of  God  ;  but  I  know  not  why  that  which  consti 
tutes  a  pure  source  of  happiness  on  earth,  individual  affection  and  love, 
may  not  survive  the  tomb.  Indeed,  is  not  the  principle  of  happiness  to 
the  sentient  being  essentially  the  same  in  heaven  and  on  earth  ?  The  love 
of  God,  and  the  good  beings  whom  He  has  created,  and  the  admiration  of 
the  material  universe  which  He  has  formed,  can  there  be  other  sources  of 
happiness  than  these  to  the  human  mind,  unless  it  is  to  alter  its  whole 
structure  and  character  ?  And,  again,  it  may  be  asked,  how  can  this  world 
be  rightly  called  a  scene  of  probation  and  discipline,  if  these  affections, 
which  we  are  commanded  to  cherish  and  cultivate  here,  are  to  leave  us  on 
the  threshold  of  the  other  world  ?  These  views,  and  many  others,  would 
seem  to  lead  to  the  belief  that  earthly  affections,  purified  and  exalted,  are 
fit  to  carry  with  us  to  the  abode  of  the  blessed.  Yet,  it  must  be  confessed, 
that  there  are  some  things  in  the  New  Testament  which  may  possibly  coun 
tenance  a  different  conclusion.  The  words  of  our  Saviour,  especially  in 
regard  to  the  woman  who  had  seven  husbands,  deserve  deep  reflection.  I 
am  free  to  confess  that  some  descriptions  of  heavenly  happiness  are  so 
ethereal  and  sublimated  as  to  fill  me  with  a  strange  sort  of  terror.  Even 
that  which  you  quote,  that  our  departed  friends  '  are  as  the  angels  of 
God,'  penetrates  my  soul  with  a  dreadful  emotion.  Like  an  angel  of  God, 
indeed,  I  hope  she  is,  in  purity,  in  happiness,  and  in  immortality ;  but,  I 
would  fain  hope  that,  in  kind  remembrance  of  those  she  has  left,  in  .a 
lingering  human  sympathy  and  human  love,  she  may  yet  be,  as  God 
originally  created  her,  '  a  little  lower  than  the  angels.' 

"  My  dear  nephew,  I  cannot  pursue  these  thoughts,  nor  turn  back  to 
see  what  I  have  written.  Adieu. 

"  D.  W." 


322  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

[TO  MRS.  TICKNOR.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  March  23, 1828. 

"  I  received  your  husband's  letter,  my  dear  Mrs.  Ticknor,  some  time 
ago,  and  your  postscript,  and  thank  you  both  for  taking  the  pains  to  think 
of  me.  My  children  write  me  often,  and  do  not  fail  to  let  me  know  how 
constant  is  your  kindness  toward  them.  You  feel  an  interest  in  them,  I 
know,  for  their  mother's  sake,  and  I  hope  they  may  be  able  in  due  time  to 
awaken  a  feeling  of  regard  and  kindness  on  their  own  account.  I  do  not 
feel  over-anxious  about  them,  knowing  that  they  are  in  safe  hands,  and 
well  disposed  of;  yet  they  necessarily  occupy  my  mind  a  great  deal,  and 
bring  reflections  and  thoughts  which  I  cannot  shut  out,  and  which  come 
also  through  many  other  channels.  I  did  not  intend,  however,  my  dear 
friend,  to  write  you  a  melancholy  letter,  or  in  depressed  spirits ;  but  so  it 
is,  that  whenever  my  mind  falls  into  communion  with  those  whom  I  know 
to  take  a  concern  in  its  recent  sorrows,  it  hastens  back  to  the  past,  and  claims 
to  be  indulged  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  friend's  condolence  and  sympathy. 
But  of  this,  no  more. 

"  My  health  has  become  very  tolerably  good,  and,  now  that  the  court 
has  closed  its  session,  I  do  not  expect  to  find  myself  involved  in  a  great 
pressure  of  affairs,  and  certainly  shall  do  nothing  that  I  am  not  absolutely 
obliged  to  do. 

"  It  is  probable  Congress  will  rise  the  middle  of  May. 

"Mr.  Ticknor  gave  me  a  very  good  account  of  Boston  matters,  up  to 
the  date  of  his  letter.  There  have  been  some  more  recent  occurrences, 
about  which  I  know  nothing  more  than  the  newspapers  tell.  I  allude  es 
pecially  to  a  great  meeting  of  Federalists,  which  is  said  to  have  taken 
place  to  aid  General  Jackson's  election,  against  Mr.  Adams.  I  did  not 
hear  that  your  husband  was  there.  If  he  was,  he  does  not  appear  to  have 
made  a  speech. 

"  I  can  tell  you  very  little  about  Washington,  as  I  do  not  go  out,  and 
see  nobody  except  in  the  halls  of  Congress.  Mr.  Vaughan  has  been  two  or 
three  times  to  see  me.  He  looks  rather  thin  and  pale,  though  he  counts 
himself  well.  Wallenstein  is  here,  a  perfect  hermit.  He  does  not  go  even 
to  Congress  or  the  court.  His  health  seems  not  good,  and  they  say  he  is 
in  love,  which,  you  know,  may  either  mend  or  mar  it,  according  to  circum 
stances. 

"  I  must  pray  you  to  give  my  love  to  Mr.  Hale's  family,  with  the  assur 
ance  that  it  shall  be  one  of  my  first  efforts  to  write  to  them.  I  see  that 
Mr.  Hale  is  the  president  or  vice-president  of  all  the  internal  improve 
ments  in  the  Commonwealth.1 

"  Give  my  love  to  your  husband,  and  believe  me,  my  dear  Mrs.  Ticknor, 
most  truly  and  sincerely  yours, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

"  Mrs.  Ticknor." 

1  The  late  Mr.  Nathan  Hale,  one  of  New  England,  and  editor  of  the  Boston 
the  founders  of  the  railroad  system  of  Daily  Advertiser. 


1828.]  VISITED  BY  MR.  TICKXOR  AND  MR.  PRESCOTT.  323 

In  the  next  month  Mr.  Webster  was  cheered  by  a  visit 
from  Mr.  Ticknor  and  Mr.  Prescott,1  which  he  seems  to  have 
anticipated  with  great  pleasure. 

[TO  MR.  TICKNOR.] 

"  WASHINGTON-,  April  18, 1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  received  yours  of  the  13th  this  morning,  and  never 
executed  commission  with  more  alacrity  and  pleasure  than  this  of  looking 
up  rooms  for  you  and  Mr.  Prescott.  It  delights  me  to  hear  that  you  are 
coming,  and  I  shall  certainly  keep  you  a  fortnight. 

"  The  rooms  are  engaged.  They  are  not  strictly  in  the  house  I  live  in, 
but  in  the  same  block,  and  quite  proximate.  My  landlady  has  engaged 
them,  and  I  am  to  have  the  pleasure  of  your  company  at  my  table.  When 
you  arrive  in  this  far-famed  metropolis,  please  direct  the  coachman  to  set 
down  at  Mrs.  Mclntyre's,  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  nearly  opposite  Gadsby's 
National  Hotel,  a  little  this  side,  precisely  by  the  side  of  a  pump,  at  a 
large  wooden  platform  which  supplies  the  place  of  a  stepping-stone.  In 
quire  for  Mr.  Webster.  If  he  is  out,  ask  for  Charles ,  and  the  rest  will 

follow  in  regular  sequence.  I  shall  see  that  there  is  dinner  for  you  at 
two  o'clock  on  Sunday ;  and,  if  that  day  should  not  bring  you,  at  four 
o'clock  on  Monday. 

"  Yours  always  truly, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

This  visit  I  find  alluded  to  in  the  following  passage  of  Mr. 
Ticknor's  Reminiscences : 

"  In  the  spring  of  1828  I  made  a  short  visit  in  Washington,  for  the 
purpose  of  breaking  up  a  cough  which  had  teased  me  for  some  time. 
Prescott  went  with  me.  Mr.  Webster  provided  rooms  for  us  in  the  house 
adjacent  to  the  one  where  he  lived,  but  we  shared  his  parlor  and  his  table. 
He  was  much  out  of  spirits,  from  the  death  of  Mrs.  Webster  a  few  months 
before,  but  he  was  very  busy  and  very  interesting.  There  was  much  talk 
of  his  going  minister  to  England,  and  I  think  he  might  have  had  the  place 
about  that  time  if  he  had  chosen.  Talking  of  it  with  him  one  day,  he  said 
he  could  not  afford  the  expense,  and  besides  he  thought  he  was  more  use 
ful  in  his  place  in  the  Senate.  I  think  he  believed  he  could  render  the 
country  more  service  there  than  anywhere  else.  Indeed,  he  intimated  as 
much,  more  than  once,  particularly  in  a  conversation  with  Mr.  Storrs,  of 
New  York,  who,  till  Mr.  Webster  undeceived  him,  believed  he  had  been 
nominated  to  the  place  that  very  morning.  Mr.  Webster  was  undoubtedly 
right.  If  he  had  gone  to  England  then,  he  could  not  have  made  the  speech 
in  answer  to  Mr.  Hayne  in  January,  1830." 

1  The  historian. 


324  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

[TO  MES.  TICKNOR.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Friday,  five  o'clock,  May—,  1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  MRS.  TICKNOR  :  I  thank  you  for  your  letter,  enclosing  your 
husband's.  He  is  dressing  to  go  to  the  President's,  and  I  shall  go  with 
him  rather  than  stay  to  my  lonely  dinner.  He  and  Mr.  Prescott  leave  me 
to-morrow.  I  shall  feel  their  loss  very  seriously,  I  assure  you,  but  I  cannot 
persuade  them  to  stay  longer.  Nothing  resists  the  attraction  of  wives  and 
children. 

"  You  are  very  kind  to  tell  me  about  my  three  little  ones.  I  have  the 
greatest  happiness  in  knowing  that  they  are  well,  and  in  feeling  how  much 
my  friends  care  for  them,  and  think  of  them. 

"  In  next  month  I  hope  to  see  you  all. 

"Adieu.     Ever  very  truly  yours, 

"D.  W." 

"Washington  was  not  the  scene  from  which  he  could  derive 
the  consolations  that  he  needed.  He  longed  for  the  society  of 
his  children  and  the  friends  of  his  home.  The  following  letter 
to  Mrs.  Lee  expresses  the  state  of  his  feelings,  as  the  session 
drew  to  its  close,  and  his  escape  became  nearer : 

[TO  MRS.  LEE.] 

"WASHINGTON,  May  18, 1828.— Sunday  Evening. 

"  MY  DEAR  FRIEND  :  Your  very  kind  letter  of  the  12th  was  received 
to-day.  I  cannot  thank  you  sufficiently  for  your  goodness  and  affection 
toward  Julia.  Certainly  you  come  nearer  supplying  her  loss  than  any  one 
else.  I  believe  she  loves  you  best  of  any ;  and  it  is  my  wish,  my  dear 
friend,  that  you  should  make  her  as  much  your  own  as  your  feelings 
prompt  you  to  do.  She  cannot  be  better  than  with  you,  and  I  incline  to 
leave  it  very  much  to  your  choice  how  much  she  shall  be  with  you,  and 
when  it  is  best  for  her  to  be  elsewhere.  You  have  a  right  to  her,  if  you 
choose  to  have  her,  which  nobody  else  will  ever  divide.  You  have  been 
among  our  dearest  friends  from  the  day  of  our  marriage,  and,  as  Julia  is 
left  motherless,  I  know  not  what  to  do  for  her  so  well  as  to  leave  her  with 
you,  whenever  it  is  agreeable  to  you  to  have  her  with  you.  If  you  think 
her  education  would  not  suffer,  I  should  be  quite  willing  she  should  be 
with  you  most  of  the  summer ;  though  I  hope  to  have  her  with  me  some 
of  the  time. 

"  I  thank  you,  my  dear  friend,  for  all  your  kind  remembrance  and  good 
wishes.  Your  regard  and  friendship  are  among  the  objects  which  make 
me  willing  to  live  longer,  and  which  I  shall  never  cease  to  value  while  I 


1828.]  DESPONDENCY.  325 

do  live.  You  say  Mr.  Sullivan  thought  me  depressed.  It  is  true.  I  fear 
I  grow  more  and  more  so.  I  feel  a  vacuum,  an  indifference,  a  want  of 
motive,  which  I  cannot  describe. 

"  I  hope  my  children,  and  the  society  of  my  best  friends,  may  rouse  me ; 
but  I  can  never  see  such  days  as  I  have  seen.  Yet  I  should  not  repine ;  I 
have  enjoyed  much,  very  much ;  and,  if  I  were  to  die  to-night,  I  should 
bless  God  most  fervently  that  I  have  lived. 

"  Adieu,  my  dear  friend  ;  I  hope  to  be  in  better  spirits  when  I  see  you. 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

This  correspondence  has  been  spread  before  the  reader, 
because  nothing  else  can  so  well  disclose  the  trial  to  which  this 
portion  of  Mr.  Webster's  life  was  subjected,  as  nothing  else  can 
so  well  exhibit  his  religious  nature,  his  tenderness,  and  his  self- 
control.  ISTor  could  there  be  a  better  tribute  to  the  character 
of  a  wife  and  a  mother  than  the  evidence  which  is  here  afforded 
of  the  blank  in  his  existence  which  this  loss  created.  The  "  ap 
plause  of  listening  senates  "  became  as  nothing  to  him,  when 
he  remembered  that  it  could  not  be  shared  by  her  who  had  wit 
nessed  all  his  triumphs,  and  whose  quick  and  intelligent  sym 
pathies  had  crowned  them  all.  The  thought  of  remaining  in 
public  life,  with  his  children  cast  upon  the  care  of  others,  rich 
as  he  was  in  friends,  oppressed  him.  His  sons  might  be  placed 
where  the  work  of  education  could  be  well  performed ;  but 
there  was  a  daughter,  inheriting  some  of  the  father's  intellect 
and  all  of  the  mother's  gentleness,  whose  bereaved  condition 
filled  him  with  anxiety.  Yet  for  them,  as  for  himself,  he  could 
see  no  way  but  to  trust  in  the  vigilant  affection  of  those  who 
loved  him  for  his  own  sake,  until  he  could  determine  whether 
there  remained  aught  for  him  in  the  paths  of  fame  that  could 
compensate,  in  the  good  he  could  do  his  country,  for  the  loss 
that  was  to  fall  on  himself  and  his,  by  continuing  in  the  public 
service. 

As  the  narrative  of  Mr.  Webster's  life  goes  on,  it  will  be 
seen  that  while  his  career  was  marked  by  great  success,  while 
his  reputation  as  a  statesman  rose  constantly  higher  and  higher 
before  the  eyes  of  men,  while  the  exercise  of  his  public  talents 
afforded  him  pleasure,  and  the  applause  that  followed  him  was 
a  source  of  happiness,  and  while  new  exigencies  in  public  affairs 
constantly  multiplied  his  distinctions,  he  was  yet  a  man  who 
suffered  perhaps  more  than  the  ordinary  share  of  human  sor- 


326  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIV. 

rows.  If  we  would  know  wliat  it  was  that  carried  him  on,  to 
the  last,  in  public  life,  and  prevented  him  from  seeking  in  a 
private  station  for  that  repose  which  is  at  once  rest  and  ob 
scurity,  we  must  look  for  something  deeper  than  mere  ambi 
tion.  Undoubtedly  he  was  ambitious.  It  would  not  be  a  true 
view  of  his  character  or  nature  to  claim  for  him  an  exemption 
from  that  attribute,  whether  it  be  a  virtue  or  a  vice.  But  it 
will  be  found,  and  it  will  be  allowed,  by  all  who  shall  under 
stand  and  embrace  the  whole  circle  of  motives  which  actuated 
him  at  the  several  most  critical  periods  of  his  life,  when  retire 
ment  from  public  station  came  prominently  before  his  thoughts, 
that  we  must  admit  him  to  have  been  chiefly  controlled  by 
patriotic  reasons,  or  we  cannot  fully  estimate  his  character. 

There  is  a  low  type  of  supposed  wisdom,  which  always  as 
signs  the  actions  of  public  men  to  a  selfish  origin,  and  which 
complacently  assumes  that  it  has  sounded  all  the  depths  of 
human  nature,  when  it  has  made  this  common  suggestion.  But 
such  vulgar  shrewdness  does  not  penetrate  beneath  the  surface. 

Among  the  measures  of  this  session  was  one  in  which  Mr. 
Webster  took  a  deep  interest,  notwithstanding  his  present  afflic 
tion.  This  was  a  bill  for  the  relief  of  the  surviving  officers  of 
the  Revolution.  In  the  Senate,  the  discussion  on  this  measure 
had  been  watched  by  him  with  great  solicitude,  until  it  ap 
peared  that  there  was  likely  to  be  an  equal  division  upon  it. 
He  had  not  intended  to  speak  upon  the  subject  until  it  was 
probable  that  the  bill  would  be  lost.  He  then  came  forward 
and  delivered  the  speech  now  contained  in  the  third  volume  of 
his  works.1  The  bill  became  a  law.  Among  the  letters  ad 
dressed  to  Mr.  Webster  by  the  surviving  patriots  whose  cause 
he  had  espoused,  the  dignity  and  elevation  of  the  following 
from  General  North,  of  Connecticut,  render  it  too  striking  to 
be  omitted.  All  my  readers  may  not  be  aware  that  the  case 
of  these  officers  involved  an  unfulfilled  contract  on  the  part  of 
the  country,  which  had  remained  neglected  for  more  than  fifty 
years.  It  was  this  feature  of  their  claim  that  Mr.  Webster 
especially  enforced,  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  impressive 
speeches  that  lie  ever  made. 

1  A  speech  delivered  in  the  Senate,     lief  of  the  Surviving  Officers  of  the  Kevo- 
April  25,  1828,  on  the  Bill  for  the  He-    lution.— ( Works,  iii.,  218.) 


1828.]  TARIFF  OF   1828.  327 

[FROM  GENERAL  NORTH.] 

"  NEAR  NEW  LONDON,  May  13, 1828. 

"Permit  me  to  offer  my  thanks  and  grateful  acknowledgments  to 
you,  sir,  and  to  the  other  gentlemen  of  the  Senate,  who,  with  you,  under 
adverse  circumstances  and  great  discouragements,  have  steadily  and  with 
force  advocated  the  claims  of  the  remaining  Kevolutionary  officers;  and 
for  the  delicacy  with  which  the  unfortunate  situation  of  many  of  them  has 
been  alluded  to.  During  the  short  period  allotted  to  us,  I  trust  we  shall 
forget  whatever  has  been  unpleasant,  whatever  we  may  have  thought  un 
just,  remembering  only  the  benefits  received  from  those  who,  had  it  been 
possible,  would  have  bestowed  a  gift  without  alloy. 

"  What  may  be  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  bill,  time  will  show.  Our  hope 
has  been  long  deferred,  it  may  be  soon  extinguished ;  but  the  soldier  of 
the  Eevolution  possesses  that  which  none  can  take  away — the  thought  of 
having  labored  in  erecting  a  temple,  under  the  ample  roof  of  which  our 
posterity  may  repose  in  safety,  and  the  oppressed  of  other  climes  find 
shelter. 

"  With  great  respect, 

"  I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

"W.  NORTH." 

At  this  session,  a  debate  took  place  in  the  Senate  on  the 
subject  of  the  tariff,  which  was  the  forerunner  of  the  discus 
sions  that  not  long  afterward  introduced  into  the  Senate  the 
doctrines  of  "  Nullification."  The  pending  bill  of  1828  was  one 
making  extensive  alterations  in  the  existing  rates  of  duties,  and, 
of  course,  it  was  filled  with  multifarious  details.  The  general 
policy  and  principle  of  protection,  and  the  sectional  interests 
affected  by  it,  as  well  as  the  propriety  of  the  several  changes 
proposed,  entered  as  usual  into  the  discussion.  It  was,  how 
ever,  on  this  occasion,  that  the  assertion  was  first  made,  by 
General  Hayne,  of  South  Carolina,  that  the  interests  of  the 
Southern  States  had  been  sacrificed,  "  shamefully  sacrificed," 
to  the  selfish  policy  of  other  sections,  and  especially  of  New 
England.  Mr.  "Webster,  on  the  9th  of  May,  took  part  in  this 
discussion,  principally  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that  the 
original  tariff  policy,  entered  upon  in  1816,  was  not  a  New- 
England  measure ;  that  the  present  bill  was  not  one  originating 
with  her ;  and  that  some  of  its  provisions  were  likely  to  benefit 
no  interests  anywhere  excepting  the  interests  of  the  Treasury. 
This  is  the  second  principal  speech  made  by  Mr.  "Webster  in 


328  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV 

Congress  on  the  subject  of  the  tariff,  and  it  is  contained  in.  the 
third  volume  of  his  works.1 

Several  of  the  provisions  of  this  bill  were  extremely  in 
jurious  to  some  of  Mr.  Webster's  constituents,  and  there  were 
great  differences  of  opinion  and  feeling  concerning  it  among 
his  immediate  fellow-citizens  in  Boston.  But  he  voted  for  it, 
because,  finding  himself  under  the  constraint  of  an  unpre 
cedented  mode  of  legislation,  obliged  to  deal  as  a  whole  with  a 
measure  containing  good  and  bad  provisions  relating  to  differ 
ent  subjects,  he  believed  that  the  good  preponderated  over  the 
evil,  having  in  view  the  general  welfare  of  the  country.  His 
colleague  in  the  Senate,  Mr.  Silsbee,  voted  the  other  way,  as 
did  the  Representative  of  the  Boston  district,  Mr.  Gorham.2 

Mr.  Webster  returned  from  the  first  session  of  the  Twentieth 
Congress  in  May,  1828.  He  was  greatly  depressed.  If  it  is 
true,  as  perhaps  it  is,  that  in  seasons  of  such  affliction  as  that 
from  which  he. now  suffered,  occupation  is  one  of  the  best  medi 
cines  to  the  mind,  the  remedy  is  one  that  requires  accompani 
ments  which  he  could  not  have  in  Washington.  He  was  neces 
sarily  separated  there  from  his  children,  and  from  the  friends 
who  could  best  minister  the  solace  that  he  needed.  On  reach 
ing  Boston,  he  gathered  his  children  once  more  under  his  own 
roof;  leaving  his  daughter,  however,  for  the  greater  part  of  the 
time,  with  Mrs.  Lee,  in  Brookline.  He  was  obliged  at  once  to 
enter  on  some  professional  engagements,  and  also  to  accept  from 
his  fellow-citizens  the  compliment  of  a  public  dinner,  which 
took  place  in  Faneuil  Hall  on  the  5th  of  June. 

In  this  expression  of  the  confidence  and  respect  of  his  friends 
and  neighbors,  all  the  principal  persons  in  the  city  participated, 
and  among  them  were  those  who  disapproved  of  his  vote  on  the 
tariff  bill  of  the  last  session.  They  respected  him  for  the  up 
rightness  of  his  character,  and  the  exercise  of  his  independent 
judgment ;  and  it  was  long,  very  long,  before  Boston  ever  had 
many  prominent  citizens  who  were  not  ready  to  give  a  candid 
interpretation  to  any  act  of  his.  On  this  occasion,  notwith 
standing  his  general  depression,  he  spoke,  in  reply  to  the  com- 

1  The  first  was  the  speech  of  April  Webster  to  vote  for  the  bill  of  1828  was, 
1  and  2,1824. — (Works,  iii.,  94.)   Ante,  that  it  gave  woollens  the  protection  which 
chap.  9.  Congress  had  pledged  itself  to  give  by 

2  The  principal  reason  that  led  Mr.  the  law  of  1824. 


1828.]  PRESIDENTIAL  ELECTION.  329 

plimentary  toast,  with  his  usual  spirit,  dignity,  and  force,  ac 
counting  for  his  vote  on  the  tariff,  alluding  to  the  measure  for 
the  relief  of  the  Revolutionary  officers,  and  to  the  subject  of  in 
ternal  improvements.1 

The  following  letter  from  Mr.  Clay  was  received  after  the 
dinner : 

[FROM  MB.  CLAY.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  13th  June,  1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Notwithstanding  your  kind  permission  given  me  in 
your  letter  of  the  8th  instant,  to  abstain  from  addressing  you,  I  cannot 
deny  myself  the  gratification  of  expressing  the  satisfaction  which  we  all 
felt  here  with  the  proceedings  and  speeches  of  the  Boston  dinner.  I  was 
particularly  delighted  with  two  or  three  circumstances :  1.  The  harmony 
which  prevailed  in  respect  to  the  tariff,  or,  rather,  the  acquiescence  in  the 
measure.  2.  Your  felicitous  defence  of  your  vote.  3.  The  notice,  truly 
national  and  patriotic,  which  you  took  of  the  great  interest  of  internal  im 
provements,  And  4.  The  New-England  feeling  to  which  you  so  ur 
gently  appealed,  and  which  the  whole  proceedings  were  well  calculated  to 
excite.  Good  will  come  of  your  work. 

"  I  have  a  letter  from  General  Porter,  who  will  be  here  in  two  or  three 
days.  He  postpones  his  decision  until  he  comes  here ;  but  I  think  it  will 
be  to  accept. 

"My  health  continues  as  it  was  when  you  left  here.  I  commence  my 
journey  next  week,  from  which  I  anticipate  the  best  effects.  I  have  been 
rendered  very  happy  by  the  company  of  my  only  surviving  daughter,  who 
joined  us  a  few  days  ago,  and  who  is  one  of  the  best  of  girls.  She  brought 
with  her  her  two  children,  whom  I  had  never  seen. 

"  Our  news  from  Kentucky  continues  good. 

"  You  will  have  seen  a  report  on  the  secret  service  fund.  It  was  a 
necessary  explanation  for  the  West.  I  must  be  held  exclusively  respon 
sible  for  its  publication,  which  the  President  approved  at  my  instance.  I 
hope  it  will  meet  your  approbation. 

"  My  best  regards  to  Everett,  Gorham,  and  Mr.  J.  Mason. 

"  Cordially  your  friend, 

"H.  CLAY. 

"D.Webster,  Esq." 

Into  the  excitements  of  the  presidential  election,  then  ap 
proaching,  Mr.  Webster  did  not  enter.  That  contest,  of  a  bit 
terness  then  unexampled,  in  which  General  Jackson  obtained  a 
majority  of  ninety-five  electoral  votes  over  Mr.  Adams,  and 

1  See  the  speech  in  Works,  i.,  163,  et  seq. 


330  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

sixty-seven  electoral  votes  above  the  number  necessary  to  a 
choice,  was  not  one  in  which  Mr.  Webster  conld  take  an  active 
part.  His  chief  regret  at  the  state  of  things  arose  from  the 
fact  that  persons  holding  opposite  opinions  on  the  constitutional 
powers  of  the  Government,  and  on  the  leading  measures  of  Mr. 
Adams's  Administration,  had  united  to  overthrow  it.  An  op 
position  founded,  not  on  the  measures  of  Government,  but  on 
other  and  chiefly  personal  causes,  he  regarded  as  dangerous  and 
alarming.  He  foresaw  in  it  that  rage  for  office,  and  that  dedi 
cation  of  the  offices  of  the  country  as  a  fund  for  the  reward  of 
personal  partisanship,  which  speedily  followed,  and  which  have 
entered  more  or  less  into  every  succeeding  renewal  of  the  con 
test  for  the  executive  power,  bringing  us  nearer  and  nearer  to 
that  catastrophe  in  which  he  feared  that  this  experiment  of 
confederated  government  would  sooner  or  later  end.  "  It  is 
my  opinion,  Mr.  President,"  he  said,  at  the  dinner  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  "  that  the  present  Government  of  the  United  States  can 
not  be  maintained  but  by  administering  it  on  principles  as  wide 
and  broad  as  the  country  over  which  it  extends.  I  mean,  of 
course,  no  extension  of  the  powers  which  it'  confers ;  but  I  speak 
of  the  spirit  with  which  those  powers  should  be  exercised.  If 
there  be  any  doubts  whether  so  many  republics,  covering  so 
vast  a  territory,  can  be  long  held  together  under  this  Constitu 
tion,  there  is  no  doubt,  in  my  judgment,  of  the  impossibility  of 
so  holding  them  together  by  any  narrow,  local,  or  selfish  system 
of  legislation.  To  render  the  Constitution  perpetual  (which 
God  grant  it  may  be),  it  is  necessary  that  its  benefits  should  be 
practically  felt  by  all  parts  of  the  country.  The  East  and  the 
West,  the  JSTorth  and  the  South,  must  all  see  their  welfare  pro 
tected  and  advanced  by  it.  While  the  Eastern  frontier  is  de 
fended  by  fortifications,  its  harbors  improved,  and  commerce 
protected  by  a  naval  force,  it  is  right  and  just  that  the  region 
beyond  the  Alleghanies  should  receive  fair  consideration  and 
equal  attention,  in  any  object  of  public  improvement,  interest 
ing  to  itself,  and  within  the  proper  power  of  the  Government. 
These,  sir,  are  in  brief  the  general  views  by  which  I  have  been 
governed  on  questions  of  this  kind ;  and  I  trust  they  are  such 
as  this  meeting  does  not  disapprove." 

Nevertheless,  Mr.  Webster  was  an  object  of  virulent  attack 


1828.]  PROSECUTES  FOR  A  LIBEL.  331 

from  many  members  of  the  old  Republican  party,  who  had  en 
tered  into  the  new  organization  for  the  support  of  General  Jack 
son's  claim  to  the  presidency.  In  this  warfare,  the  persons  who 
assailed  him  did  not  evince  their  "  Republican  "  consistency.  As 
a  mere  Federalist  of  a  former  day,  they  would  have  passed  him 
by  unmolested,  or  have  courted  his  favor.  Upon  all  grounds 
of  party  consistency,  aside  from  his  personal  eminence,  he  was 
entitled  to  their  respect  and  confidence.  His  election  to  the 
House  of  Representatives  in  1822  had  not  been  opposed  by  the 
Republicans;  in  1824,  he  was  unanimously  selected  as  the 
Republican  candidate ;  and,  in  1826,  that  party  again  united  in 
supporting  him  as  their  Representative  in  Congress.  When 
elected  to  the  Senate  in  June,  1827,  he  was  chosen  by  a  Legisla 
ture  in  which  a  great  majority  of  the  members  were  of  the  same 
Republican  party.  His  whole  course,  therefore,  in  the  support 
which  he  had  given  to  the  measures  of  Mr.  Adams's  Adminis 
tration,  had  received  the  sanction  of  a  party  which  had  been  the 
ancient  opponents  of  the  Federalists ;  for  Mr.  Webster,  in  truth, 
was  regarded  as  a  statesman  whose  political  principles,  in  re 
spect  to  the  constitutional  powers  of  the  Government  and  the 
proper  mode  of  administering  them,  were  such  as  in  that  day 
were  considered  to  be  "  Republican."  His  transcendent  abili 
ties  and  patriotism,  added  to  this  political  sympathy  with  his 
opinions  on  public  questions,  disarmed,  with  many  of  the  old 
"  Republicans,"  the  prejudice  that  might  otherwise  have  arisen 
from  his  former  connection  with  the  now  extinct  Federal  party. 

Still,  there  were  individuals  among  his  constituents  who 
could  not  overlook  the  fact  that  he  had  supported  Mr.  Adams's 
Administration,  and  now  desired  his  reelection.  It  is  needless  to 
revive  or  recall  these  personal  attacks.  But,  as  there  was  one 
of  them  which  Mr.  Webster  thought  fit  to  bring  before  a  court 
of  law,  it  is  proper  that  an  exact  account  should  here  be  given 
of  the  causes  which  led  him  to  this  departure  from  a  rule  which 
he  followed  upon  all  other  similar  occasions  throughout  his  life. 

In  the  autumn  of  1828,  Mr.  Webster  prosecuted  a  gentleman 
of  high  social  standing  in  Boston  by  indictment  for  a  libel. 
The  facts  were  these :  During  the  canvass  for  the  presidential 
election  of  that  year,  there  appeared  in  the  party  newspapers 
of  the  day  what  purported  to  be  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  JefFer- 


332  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

son  to  the  Hon.  "William  B.  Giles,  in  1825,  in  which  Mr.  Jeffer 
son  referred  to  disclosures  made  to  him  by  Mr.  John  Quincy 
Adams  in  1807  or  1808,  concerning  the  action  of  the  leaders  of 
the  Federal  party  in  New  England  at  the  time  of  the  Embargo. 
Mr.  Adams  was  stated  in  that  letter  to  have  accused  those 
leaders  of  the  design,  in  their  opposition  to  the  Embargo,  of 
effecting  a  dissolution  of  the  Union,  with  a  view  of  uniting  the 
New-England  States  to  the  British  provinces. 

Mr.  Adams  immediately  caused  an  article  to  be  published 
in  the  National  Intelligencer  at  Washington,  denying  that  he 
had  made  such  disclosures  in  any  interview  with  Mr.  Jefferson, 
but  admitting  that,  in  a  correspondence  with  Mr.  Giles  in 
1807-'8,  he  had  said  that  he  thought  the  opposition  to  the  Em 
bargo  would  become  so  open  and  violent  as  to  require  forcible 
suppression ;  in  wrhich  case  he  had  "  unequivocal  evidence " 
that  the  Federalist  leaders  would  attempt  to  form  a  separate 
confederacy  of  New  England,  and  call  in  Great  Britain  to  their 
aid ;  for  he  knew  it  had  long  been  their  design  to  bring  about 
such  a  dissolution  of  the  Union. 

Mr.  Jefferson's  letter  and  Mr.  Adams's  admissions  elicited 
a  great  deal  of  acrimonious  discussion  and  comment  both  from 
the  political  opponents  of  Mr.  Adams  and  from  those  who  had 
hitherto  been  his  political  friends.  In  a  newspaper  published 
in  Boston,  under  the  name  of  The  Jackson  Republican,  there 
appeared  an  article,  on  the  29th  of  October,  1828,  referring  to 
Mr.  Webster  by  name  as  one  of  the  Federalist  leaders  who  had 
been  charged  by  Mr.  Adams  in  1807-'8  with  this  treasonable 
design.  Mr.  Webster  was  naturally  indignant  at  such  a  use  of 
his  name,  which  pointed  at  Mm  a  charge  that  Mr.  Adams  never 
could  have  thought  of  levelling  at  him  ;  for,  in  the  time  of  the 
Embargo  and  of  the  New-England  resistance  to  it,  Mr.  Webster 
was  a  young  lawyer  in  New  Hampshire,  and  had  no  personal 
connection  with  the  gentlemen  who  were  named  by  the  article 
as  the  obnoxious  plotters  against  the  Union,  all  of  whom  were 
citizens  of  Massachusetts.  Mr.  Webster's  own  course,  more 
over,  respecting  the  Embargo,  was  well  known,  or  could  be 
easily  ascertained ;  and,  if  there  was  any  thing  treasonable  in 
the  proceedings  or  design  of  the  subsequent  Hartford  Conven 
tion,  it  was  quite  notorious  in  Boston,  in  1828,  that  he  had 


1828.]  INVITATIONS  TO  DELIVER  ADDRESSES.  333 

never  had  any  thing  to  do  with  it,  and  had  disapproved  of  it. 
He  had  other  reasons  for  feeling  deeply  hurt  by  the  publication. 
He  knew  well,  as  every  one  else  knew,  that  the  New-England 
resistance  to  the  Embargo  was  a  constitutional  resistance ;  that 
the  law  was  subjected  to  a  constitutional  test  of  its  validity,  in 
a  court  of  the  United  States,  and  was  upheld,  and  that  the 
people  who  suffered  by  it  submitted.  The  eminent  men  who 
were  charged  with  fomenting  treasonable  projects  had  since  be 
come  his  personal  friends,  and  his  name  was  now  coupled  with 
theirs  in  an  infamous  charge,  founded  on  statements  said  to 
have  been  formerly  made  by  a  man  filling  the  exalted  position 
of  President  of  the  United  States,  and  whose  reelection  Mr.  "Web 
ster  now  favored.  In  all  the  tactics  of  party  warfare,  there  has 
scarcely  been  a  greater  accumulation  of  personal  injustice ;  and 
this  injustice  was  surrounded  by  circumstances  which,  in  Mr. 
"Webster's  opinion,  and  that  of  friends  who  were  no  way  in 
volved  in  the  charge,  made  it  his  duty  to  call  for  the  author  of 
the  article,  and  to  prosecute  him  for  libel. 

The  name  of  the  author  was  given  up  by  the  publishers  of 
the  paper,  and  the  grand  jury  found  a  bill  of  indictment  against 
him,  which  was  tried  in  the  Supreme  Judicial  Court  of  Massa 
chusetts,  Chief- Justice  Parker  presiding,  on  the  16th  and  17th 
of  December,  1828.  Before  the  trial  came  on,  the  defence  in 
timated  that  the  course  which  they  should  take  would  lead  to 
important  developments  concerning  the  political  period  of  the 
Embargo ;  but  they  abandoned  this  design,  and  contented  them 
selves  with  an  effort  to  show  that  the  article  was  no  libel  upon 
Mr.  Webster,  as  no  malice  was  intended  toward  him,  the  whole 
being  a  fair  comment  on  the  statements  and  conduct  of  Mr. 
Adams.  The  jury  did  not  agree.  Ten  were  for  convicting 
and  two  were  for  acquitting.  The  case  was  never  pursued 
further.1 

Probably  it  happens  to  all  conspicuous  public  men  to  be  much 
importuned  by  colleges  and  literary  societies  to  appear  as  their 

1  A  clearer  case  of  libel  could  not  well  charge  of  treason  against  Mr.  Webster, 

exist.     The  name  of  Mr.  Webster  had  not  and  did  not  comment  on  one  made  by 

been  introduced,  nor  had  he  been  alluded  somebody  else.     But  the  whole  affair  was 

to,  in  Mr.  Adams's  correspondence  with  mixed  up  with  the  party  feelings  of  the 

Mr.  Giles,  or  in  the  letter  attributed  to  day,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  there 

Mr.  Jefferson.     The  writer  of  the  news-  should  have  been  two  recusant  jurymen 

paper    article,    therefore,    originated    a  on  the  panel. 


334  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIY. 

"  orator  "  at  their  anniversaries.  Many  such  applications,  ad 
dressed  to  Mr.  Webster  at  this  time,  are  now  before  me,  some 
of  them  couched  in  the  language  of  young  men,  who,  in 
genuously  occupied  with  the  concerns  of  associations  filling 
a  large  space  in  their  thoughts,  apparently  supposed  that  an 
"  honorary  membership  "  should  be  a  sufficient  inducement  to 
draw  from  a  great  statesman  a  very  large  donation  of  his  time 
and  thoughts ;  and  sometimes  it  was  added  that  the  invitation 
was  sanctioned  by  the  college  "  faculty." 

The  truth  is,  the  curiosity  to  see  and  hear  Mr.  Webster,  in 
tense  among  all  classes  of  our  countrymen  at  all  times  in  his  life 
after  his  distinction  was  attained — a  curiosity  that  arose  not 
only  from  his  great  intellectual  reputation  and  his  power  as  a 
speaker,  but  from  his  singularly  impressive  aspect  and  the  ma 
jesty  of  his  person — was  not  likely  to  be  less  strong  among 
those  who  were  engaged  in  intellectual  pursuits,  than  it  was 
among  the  general  multitude.  But,  of  course,  it  was  necessary 
to  return  a  civil  refusal  to  nearly  all  such  requests.  There  did 
occur,  however,  occasions  when  the  public  importance  of  his 
influence,  in  promoting  the  objects  of  particular  associations 
designed  to  advance  popular  intellectual  culture,  made  it  neces 
sary  for  him  to  discharge  duties  that  were  somewhat  foreign 
from  his  habitual  studies  and  pursuits.  Such  was  the  occasion 
when  he  consented  to  deliver  the  introductory  lecture  before 
"  The  Boston  Mechanics'  Association,"  on  the  12th  of  Novem 
ber,  1828.  The  subject  of  this  discourse  was  the  relations  of 
science  with  the  practical  arts.1 

For  similar  reasons,  he  presided  in  the  month  of  November 
at  a  preliminary  meeting  of  the  gentlemen  who  founded  the 
"  Boston  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge,"  of 
which  in  the  following  year  he  became  president. 

[FROM  MR.  CLAY.] 

"  "WASHINGTON,  24ta  October,  1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Although  some  of  the  Congressional  results  in  Ohio 
are  to  be  regretted,  my  belief  is  unshaken  that  we  shall  get  the  State  by  a 
large  majority.  The  returns  in  Whittlesey's,  Bartlett's,  Vinton's,  and 
McClure's  districts  are  not  yet  fully  received.  In  them,  our  majorities  will 

1  Vide  Works,  i.,  176,  et  seq. 


1828.]  ELECTION  OF  GENERAL  JACKSON.  335 

be  very  great.    Trimble  will  be  reflected  by  many  thousands,  and  he,  you 
know,  was  the  Administration  candidate  for  Governor. 

"  My  intelligence  from  Kentucky  continues  good,  very  good.  I  have 
heard  of  the  safe  reception  there  of  what  you  sent.  All  has  been  done,  and 
will  continue  to  be  done,  that  honorable  men  can  or  ought  to  do. 

"  I  yet  think  that  Mr.  Adams  will  be  reflected ;  but  it  is  mortifying  and 
sickening  to  the  hearts  of  the  real  lovers  of  free  government  that  the  contest 
should  be  so  close ;  and  that  if  Heaven  grants  us  success  it  will  be  perhaps 
by  less  than  a  majority  of  six  votes. 

"I  thank  you  for  the  hint  about  Mr.  B.,  who  has  not  yet  called. 
"  Always  cordially  your  friend, 

"  H.  CLAY. 

"D.Webster,  Esq." 

The  presidential  election  terminated,  as  Mr.  Webster  had 
foreseen  it  would,  in  the  choice  of  General  Jackson.  He  had 
not  participated  in  the  sanguine  belief  entertained  by  Mr.  Clay, 
that  Mr.  Adams  was  to  be  reflected.  Still,  he  had  done  what 
he  could  by  diffusing  correct  information  respecting  the  real 
merits  of  Mr.  Adams's  course ;  and  it  was  in  a  great  degree  a 
consequence  of  his  exertions  in  this  way  that  Mr.  Adams  re 
ceived  all  the  electoral  votes  of  ]STew  England.  But  they  were 
given  from  what  Mr.  Ezekiel  Webster  afterward  well  described 
as  "  a  cold  sense  of  duty,  and  not  from  any  liking  of  the  man." 
"  The  measures  of  his  Administration,"  he  added,  "  were  just  and 
wise,  and  every  honest  man  should  have  supported  them,  but 
many  honest  men  did  not,  for  the  reason  I  have  mentioned." 

[FROM  MR.  CLAY.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  30ta  November,  1828. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  As  I  understand  that  you  are  not  to  be  here  for  a 
month,  I  wish  to  say  some  things  which  I  had  intended  for  a  personal 
interview. 

"  We  are  beaten.  It  is  useless  to  dwell  on  the  causes.  It  is  useless  to 
repine  at  the  result.  What  is  our  actual  position  ?  We  are  of  the  majority 
in  regard  to  measures ;  we  are  of  the  minority  in  respect  to  the  person 
designated  as  Chief  Magistrate.  Our  effort  should  be  to  retain  the  ma 
jority  we  have.  We  may  lose  it  by  imprudence.  I  think,  in  regard  to 
the  new  Administration,  we  should  alike  avoid  professions  of  support  or 
declarations  of  opposition,  in  advance.  We  can  only  yield  the  former,  if 
our  principles  are  adopted  and  pursued,  and,  if  they  should  be,  our  honor 
and  our  probity  afford  a  sufficient  pledge  that  we  shall  not  abandon  them. 
To  say  beforehand  that  we  will  support  the  President-elect,  if  he  adheres 


336  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIV. 

to  our  systems,  is  to  say  that  we  will  be  honest ;  and  that  I  hope  is  a  super 
fluous  proclamation.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  were  now  to  issue  a  mani 
festo  of  hostility,  we  should  keep  united,  by  a  sense  of  common  danger, 
the  discordant  confederates  who  have  taken  the  field  against  us.  They 
cannot  remain  in  corps  but  from  external  pressure.  The  dissensions  among 
them  this  winter,  the  formation  of  the  new  Cabinet,  and  the  inaugural 
speech,  will  enable  us  to  discover  the  whole  ground  of  future  operations. 
Above  all,  I  think  we  ought  not  to  prematurely  agitate  the  question  of  the 
succession.  The  nation  wants  repose.  The  agitations  of  the  last  six  years 
entitle  it  to  rest.  If  it  is  again  to  be  immediately  disturbed,  let  others, 
not  us,  assume  the  responsibility. 

"  We  shall  here  all  calmly  proceed  in  our  various  spheres  to  discharge 
our  duties  until  the  4th  of  March.  The  message  is  good.  It  makes  no 
allusion  to  the  late  event.  Its  strongest  features  are  the  support  of  the 
tariff,  and  disapprobation  of  sentiments  of  disunion. 

"I  shall  retire  to  Ashland  after  the  4th  of  March,  and  there  consider 
and  decide  my  future  course.  I  do  not  mean  to  look  at  it  until  there. 

"  You  have  all  my  wishes  for  success  in  the  prosecution  against . 

I  regretted  the  publication  here  which  led  to  the  libel ;  but  most  certainly 
I  never  supposed  you  to  be  alluded  to  in  that  publication.    In  the  midst 
of  all  the  heats  of  former  times,  I  believed  you,  as  I  have  since  found  you, 
faithful  to  the  Union,  to  the  Constitution,  and  to  liberty. 
"  Under  every  vicissitude,  believe  me 

."  Sincerely  your  friend, 

"H.  CLAY. 
"D.Webster." 


1828.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  337 


CHAPTER   XY. 

1828-1829. 

INAUGURATION    OF    PRESIDENT    JACKSON  -  DEATH    OF    MK.    EZEKIEL 
WEBSTER  -  SECOND   MARRIAGE. 


second  session  of  the  Twentieth  Congress  found  Mr. 
-L  Webster,  in  December,  1828,  again  in  the  Senate  and  in 
the  Supreme  Court.  Great  uncertainty  prevailed  at  Washing 
ton  concerning  the  course  likely  to  be  taken  by  the  President 
elect.  General  Jackson  remained  in  Tennessee,  answering  very 
few  of  the  multitude  of  letters  that  were  sent  to  him,  urging 
him  to  make  a  general  removal  of  the  incumbents  of  the  public 
offices.  It  was  not  known  who  were  to  form  his  Cabinet.  Of 
this  state  of  "  syncope,"  arising  from  ignorance  of  the  views  of 
the  new  President,  Mr.  Webster  writes,  in  January,  1828  : 

"  My  opinion  is,  that,  when  he  comes,  he  will  bring  a  breeze1  with  him. 
Which  way  it  will  blow,  I  cannot  tell. 

"  He  will  either  go  with  the  party,  as  they  say  in  New  York,  or  go 
'  the  whole  hog,'  as  it  is  phrased  elsewhere,  making  all  the  places  he  can 
for  his  friends  and  supporters,  and  shaking  a  rod  of  terror  at  his  op- 
posers. 

"  Or  else  he  will  continue  to  keep  his  own  counsels,  make  friends  and 
advisers  of  whom  he  pleases,  and  be  President  upon  his  own  strength. 

"  The  first  would  show  boldness  where  there  is  no  danger,  and  decision 
where  the  opposite  virtue  of  moderation  would  be  more  useful.  The  latter 
would  show  real  nerve,  and,  if  he  have  talents  to  maintain  himself  in  that 
course,  true  greatness. 

"  My  fear  is  stronger  than  my  hope. 
23 


338  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XV 

"  Mr.  Adains  is  in  good  health,  and  complains  not  at  all  of  the  measure 
meted  out  to  him. 

"  Mr.  Clay's  health  is  much  improved,  and  his  spirits  excellent.  He 
goes  to  Kentucky  in  March,  and,  I  conjecture,  will  be  pressed  into  the  next 
House  of  Representatives.  His  chance  of  being  at  the  head  of  affairs  is 
now  better,  in  my  judgment,  than  ever  before. 

"  Keep  New  England  firm  and  steady,  and  she  may  make  him  Presi 
dent  if  she  chooses. 

"  Sundry  important  nominations  are  postponed,  probably  to  know  Gen 
eral  Jackson's  pleasure. 

"  The  above  contains  all  that  is  known  here  at  this  time." 

General  Jackson  arrived  in  due  time,  and  the  "  breeze " 
which  he  brought  and  the  direction  in  which  it  blew  are  well 
known.  Mr.  Webster  was  disposed  to  look  on  calmly ;  and  he 
was  certainly  much  amused  with  whatever  was  going  on,  as 
well  as  greatly  anxious  about  what  was  to  ensue. 

[TO  MRS.   EZEKIEL  WEBSTER.] 

"  SENATE-CHAMBER.  February  19, 1829. 

"  MY  DEAR  SISTER  :  I  must  begin  with  apology ;  or,  let  me  rather  say, 
with  confession  ;  for,  though  I  am  willing  to  confess  great  and  censurable 
omissions,  I  have  little  to  urge  by  way  of  apology,  and  nothing  which 
amounts  to  justification.  Let  me  pray  you,  therefore,  in  the  exercise  of 
your  clemency,  to  adopt  the  rule  which  Hamlet  prescribes  for  passing  judg 
ment  on  the  players.  Do  not  treat  me  according  to  my  deserts,  for,  if  so, 
'  who.  would  escape  whipping ; '  but,  according  to  your  bounty  and  dig 
nity,  the  less  I  deserve  forgiveness,  the  more  will  forgiveness  exalt  your 
forbearance  and  mercy. 

"  The  children,  under  your  good  superintendence,  have  written  me  con 
tinually,  day  by  day,  very  good  letters.  Mr.  Paige,  also,  has  been  kind,  as 
he  always  is. 

"  Your  own  letters  have  completed  my  circle  of  domestic  correspond 
ence,  and  I  must  say  that  it  has  been  very  punctual,  and  highly  gratifying. 
And  now  what  can  I  tell  you  worth  hearing  ? 

"  General  Jackson  has  been  here  about  ten  days.  Of  course,  the  city  is 
full  of  speculation  and  speculators.  '  A  great  multitude,'  too  many  to  be 
fed  without  a  miracle,  are  already  in  the  city,  hungry  for  office.  Especially, 
I  learn,  that  the  typographical  corps  is  assembled  in  great  force.  From 
New  Hampshire,  our  friend  Hill ;  from  Boston,  Mr.  Greene ;  from  Connecti 
cut,  Mr.  Norton ;  from  New  York,  Mr.  Noah ;  fron  Kentucky,  Mr.  Ken 
dall  ;  and,  from  everywhere  else,  somebody  else.  So  many  friends  ready 
to  advise,  and  whose  advice  is  so  disinterested,  make  somewhat  of  a  numer 
ous  council  about  the  President-elect ;  and,  if  report  be  true,  it  is  a  council 


1829.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  339 

which  only  'makes  that  darker  which  was  dark  enough  before.'  For 
these  reasons,  or  these  with  others,  nothing  is  settled  yet  about  the  new 
Cabinet.  I  suppose  Mr.  Van  Buren  will  be  Secretary  of  State ;  but,  be 
yond  that,  I  do  not  think  any  thing  is  yet  determined. 

"  For  ten  or  twelve  days  our  Senate  has  been  acting,  with  closed  doors, 
on  certain  nominations  to  office  by  Mr.  Adams.  What  we  have  done  is  not 
yet  known,  though  one  day  it  will  be,  probably. 

"  The  general  spirit  prevailing  here,  with  the  friends  of  the  new  Presi 
dent,  is  that  of  a  pretty  decided  party  character.  It  is  not  quite  so  fierce 
as  our  New-England  Jackson  men  are  actuated  by ;  still,  I  think  it  likely 
to  grow  more  and  more  bitter,  unless,  which  is  highly  probable,  the  party 
itself  should  divide. 

"  We  have  all  read  the  dispute  between  Mr.  Adams  and  the  Boston 
gentlemen.  Thus  far,  I  believe,  the  universal  feeling  is,  that  Mr.  Adams 
has  the  worst  side  of  it.  I  hear,  however,  that  he  is  about  to  reply  in 
another  pamphlet ! 

The  fashionable  world  is,  and  has  been,  full  and  gay.  Crowds  have 
come,  and  are  coming,  to  see  the  inauguration,  etc.  I  have  been  to  three 
parties — to  wit,  Mrs.  Adams's  last,  Mrs.  Clay's  last,  and  Mrs.  Porter's  last. 
Mrs.  Porter,  wife  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  is  a  fine  woman,  whom  we  visited 
at  Niagara,  when  there  four  years  ago.  With  these  manifestations  of  re 
gard  for  the  setting  sun  and  stars,  I  have  satisfied  my  desire  of  seeing  the 
social  circles.  If  there  should  be  a  ball  on  the  22d,  I  shall  attend  as 
usual,  to  commemorate  the  great  and  good  man  born  on  that  day. 

"  Judge  Story  is  well,  and  in  his  usual  spirits.  The  court  is  deeply  en 
gaged,  and,  as  soon  as  I  get  rid  of  these  secret  sessions  of  the  Senate,  I 
have  enough  to  do  in  it. 

"  We  are  looking  to  New  Hampshire  ;  I  shall  not  engage  lodgings  for 
you  and  your  husband  next  winter,  till  I  see  the  returns.1 
[Conclusion  cut  off.~\ 


[TO  MRS.   EZEKIEL  WEBSTER.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  March  4, 1829. 
"  First  year  of  the  Administration  of  Andrew  Jackson,  and  the  first  day. 

"  MY  DEAR  SISTER  :  I  thank  you  for  yours,  received  to-day ;  and  thank 
you  both  for  the  letter  itself  and  for  your  pardon  which  it  contains,  and 
of  which  I  stood  in  so  much  need.  Your  benignity  is  memorable  and 
praiseworthy.  To  be  serious,  however,  my  dear  sister,  let  me  say,  once  for 
all,  that  I  have  a  very  affectionate  regard  for  you,  that  I  am  very  glad  you 
are  my  sister,  and  the  wife  of  the  best  of  all  brothers  ;  and  if,  like  him,  I 
am  not  the  most  punctual  of  all  correspondents,  I  am  like  him  in  sincerity 
and  constancy  of  esteem.  If  you  find  in  your  connection  with  my  own 

1  Mr.  E.  Webster  had  reluctantly  con-  shire  for  a  seat  in  Congress ;  but  he  was 
sented  to  be  a  candidate  in  New  Hamp-  not  elected. 


340  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XV. 

little  broken  circle  but  one-half  as  much  pleasure  as  you  bestow,  you  will 
have  no  reason  to  regret  it.  Your  presence  with  my  children  through  the 
winter  has  relieved  me  from  a  pressing  weight  of  anxiety. 

"  To-day  we  have  had  the  inauguration.  A  monstrous  crowd  of  people 
is  in  the  city.  I  never  saw  any  thing  like  it  before.  Persons  have  come 
five  hundred  miles  to  see  General  Jackson  ;  and  they  really  seem  to  think 
that  the  country  is  rescued  from  some  dreadful  danger. 

"  The  inauguration  speech  you  will  see.  I  cannot  make  much  of  it, 
except  that  it  is  anti-tariff,  at  least  in  some  degree.  What  it  says  about 
reform  in  office  may  be  either  a  prelude  to  a  general  change  in  office,  or  a 
mere  sop  to  soothe  the  hunger,  without  satisfying  it,  of  the  thousand  ex 
pectants  for  office  who  throng  the  city,  and  clamor  all  over  the  country. 
I  expect  some  changes,  but  not  a  great  many  at  present.  The  show  lasted 
only  about  half  an  hour.  The  Senate  assembled  at  eleven ;  the  judges  and 
foreign  ministers  came  in;  the  President-elect  was  introduced,  and  all 
seated  by  half-past  eleven.  The  Senate  was  full  of  ladies ;  a  pause  ensued 
till  twelve.  Then  the  President,  followed  by  the  Senate,  etc.,  went  through 
the  great  rotunda,  and  all  became  confusion.  On  the  portico,  in  the  open 
air,  the  day  very  warm  and  pleasant,  he  read  his  inaugural,  and  took  the 
oath.  A  great  shout  followed  from  the  multitude,  and,  in  fifteen  minutes, 
'  silence  settled  deep  and  still.'  Everybody  was  dispersed.  As  I  walked 
home,  I  called  in  at  a  bookstore,  and  saw  a  volume  which  I  now  send  you ; 
it  may  serve  to  regulate  matters  of  etiquette  at  Boscawen. 

"  I  hope  to  write  Edward  to-night.  If  not,  I  shall  not  fail  to  do  so  to 
morrow. 

Yours  very  sincerely  and  truly, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 


[TO  ME.   EZEKIEL   WEBSTER.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Sunday  Evening,  March  15, 1829. 

"  DEAR  EZEKIEL  :  The  Senate  will  probably  adjourn  to-morrow,  and  I 
hope  the  court  will  rise,  or,  at  least,  will  dismiss  me  by  Wednesday  or 
Thursday.  I  shall  be  immediately  off.  My  books  are  in  trunks.  I  shall 
hear  from  New  Hampshire  to-morrow,  and  dispose  of  them  according  to 
circumstances.  If  no  change  takes  place  in  my  own  condition,  of  which  I 
have  not  the  slightest  expectation,  and  if  you  are  not  elected,  I  shall  not 
return.  This,  inter  nos,  but  my  mind  is  settled.  Under  present  circum 
stances,  public  and  domestic,  it  is  disagreeable  being  here,  and  to  me  there 
is  no  novelty  to  make  compensation.  It  will  be  better  for  me  and  my 
children  that  I  should  be  with  them.  If  I  do  not  come  in  a  public,  I  shall 
not  in  a  professional  character.  I  can  leave  the  court  now  as  well  as  ever, 
and  can  earn  my  bread  as  well  at  home  as  here. 

"  Your  company,  and  that  of  your  wife,  would  make  a  great  difference. 
I  have  not  much  expectation  that  you  will  be  returned.  Our  fortune  is,  as 
connected  with  recent  and  current  events,  that,  if  there  be  opposite  chances, 


1829.]  DEATH  OF  EZEKIEL  WEBSTER.  341 

the  unfavorable  one  turns  up.  You  had  a  snow  of  five  feet,  which  of  itself 
might  turn  the  election  against  the  well-disposed  and  indifferent,  and  in 
favor  of  the  mischievous  and  the  active.  I  shall  not  be  disappointed  if  I 
hear  bad  news. 

"  I  make  my  point  to  be  home  the  first  day  of  April,  when  I  trust  I 
shall  meet  you.  "We  will  then  settle  what  is  best  to  do  with  the  children. 
I  shall  want  Julia  and  Edward  to  stay  a  little  while  with  me.  Edward,  I 
think,  should  then  go  to  Boscawen.  I  hardly  know  what  I  shall  think 
best  to  do  with  Julia. 

"  Yours,  as  ever, 

"D.  WEBSTER. 

"  P.  S. — We  have  had  one  important  cause  here.  It  is  from  New  York, 
respecting  what  is  called  the  Sailors'  Snug  Harbor.  I  have  made  a  greater 
exertion  in  it  than  in  any  other  since  Dartmouth  College  vs.  Woodward,  or 
than  it  is  probable  I  shall  ever  make  in  another." 

But  this  was  the  last  of  the  hopes  that  turned  on  the  future 
society  of  his  brother  and  the  excellent  lady  who  had  had  the 
care  of  his  children  through  the  preceding  winter.  Mr.  Web 
ster  arrived  at  his  own  house,  in  Boston,  in  the  second  week  in 
April,  1829.  Mrs.  Ezekiel  Webster  was  there,  with  her  eldest 
daughter.  At  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  the  eleventh  a 
messenger  brought  the  sad  intelligence  that  Mr.  Ezekiel  Web 
ster  had  died  suddenly  on  the  previous  day.  His  death,  which 
was  instantaneous,  occurred  in  the  court-house  at  Concord, 
"New  Hampshire,  while  he  was  addressing  a  jury.1  I  borrow 
the  words  of  his  son-in-law,  Professor  Sanborn,  of  Dartmouth 
College : 

"  Mr.  "Webster  was  speaking,  standing  erect,  on  a  plain  floor,  the  house 
full,  and  the  court  and  jurors  and  auditors  intently  listening  to  his  words, 
with  all  their  eyes  fastened  upon  him.  Speaking  with  full  force,  and  per 
fect  utterance,  he  arrived  at  the  end  of  one  branch  of  his  argument.  He 
closed  that  branch,  uttered  the  last  sentence,  and  the  last  word  of  that  sen 
tence,  with  perfect  tone  and  emphasis,  and  then,  in  an  instant,  erect,  and 
with  arms  depending  by  his  side,  he  fell  backward,  without  bending  a 
joint,  and,  so  far  as  appeared,  was  dead  before  his  head  reached  the  floor." 3 

He  was  at  the  age  of  only  forty-nine  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
He  was  a  man  of  high  talent,  much  professional  learning,  and 

1  He  died  of  a  disease  of  the  heart,     aware  that  they  ever  spoke  of  it  to  each 
of  which  Mr.  Daniel  Webster  had  long    other, 
known  the  existence,  although  I  am  not          2  Correspondence,  i.,  42. 


342  L!FE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XV. 

great  solidity  of  character.  From  their  earliest  youth,  the 
younger  and  more  brilliant  of  these  two  brothers  was  more  de 
pendent  on  the  sound  judgment  of  the  elder,  while  he  lived, 
than  he  was  on  that  of  any  other  man  with  whom  he  was  ever 
connected.  "  He  has  been  my  reliance  through  life,"  is  the 
weighty  testimony  borne  by  the  survivor  to  him  who  had  been 
thus  snatched  away.  The  qualities  of  Ezeldel  Webster  were  of 
a  kind  eminently  adapted  to  produce  this  feeling  in  one  who, 
however  great  and  wise,  was  embarked  on  the  stormy  sea  of 
public  life,  and  in  whom  the  powers  of  genius  were  united  with 
its  dangers.  The  elder  brother  wras  a  man  whose  days  were 
passed  in  the  less  exciting  scenes  of  a  country  life ;  and  if,  from 
a  sense  of  duty,  he  was  sometimes  drawn  into  politics,  it  was 
without  personal  ambition.  While  he  pursued  his  profession  as 
a  lawyer  with  diligence  and  success,  he  enjoyed  the  tranquillizing 
influences  of  agricultural  tastes  and  knowledge,  a  department 
in  which  his  public  spirit,  his  intelligence,  and  his  foresight, 
were  of  great  service  to  his  native  State.1  At  the  same  time, 
his  intellectual  culture  was  always  maintained  at  the  high  point 
at  which  he  left  the  college,  where  he  received  the  education 
that  he  obtained  with  so  much  painful  exertion.  Indeed,  it  is 
said,  by  those  who  should  know,  that  his  classical  attainments 
and  general  reading  were  far  more  extensive  than  is  common 
with  men  engaged  earnestly  and  early  in  active  life.  Before 
his  brother  left  New  Hampshire,  he  was  not  willing  to  put  him 
self  forward  in  the  public  exhibition  of  his  professional  talents ; 
but,  after  such  a  comparison  was  no  longer  likely  to  be  sug 
gested,  he  became  eminent  as  an  advocate.  He  was  a  man 

1  It   is  worthy  of   commemoration,  provements  which  are  made  should  owe 

that  when  Mr.  Daniel  Webster  delivered  their  existence  to  chance  or  accident  ? 

his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Oration  at  Dart-  The  tillers  of  the  soil  have  certainly  a 

mouth,  in  1809,  New  Hampshire  did  not  right  to  expect  that  men  of  science  will 

possess  a  single  agricultural  society.    On  lend  them  the  aids  of  their  knowledge, 

that  occasion,  after  speaking  of  the  like  An  agricultural  society,  formed  on  prin- 

destitution  in  the  matter  of  historical  so-  ciples  broad  enough  to  embrace  such  ob- 

cieties,  he  said :  "  Is  it  not  still  more  in-  jects  of  natural  history  as  are  connected 

credible  that,  in  a  community  where  agri-  with    husbandry,    is    an    establishment 

culture  is  the  great  leading  interest  of  all  which  long,  long  ere  this,  should  have 

classes,  no  two  minds   should  combine  been  effected." 

their  powers  to  facilitate  its  improve-  This  strong  recommendation  did  not 
ment  ?  That  there  should  be  no  union  remain  unheeded.  Ezekiel  Webster  be- 
of  effort,  no  concert,  no  comparison  of  came  the  most  active  founder  and  after- 
experiments  ?  That  all  should  be  left  to  ward  the  president  of  the  Merrimac  Ag- 
individual  enterprise,  and  the  few  im-  ricultural  Society. 


1829.]  DEATH  OF  EZEKIEL  WEBSTER.  343 

of  strong  religious  faith  and  sincere  piety.  His  loss  was  long 
and  deeply  felt  by  the  community  in  which  he  had  always 
lived.1 

In  person  he  was  tall,  standing  nearly  six  feet ;  of  a  full 
muscular  development,  and  commanding  presence.  If  the  testi 
mony  was  partial,  it  was  sincere :  "  He  appeared  to  me,"  Mr. 
Webster  said,  in  1846,  "  the  finest  human  form  that  I  ever  laid 
eyes  on.  I  saw  him  in  his  coffin ;  a  tinged  cheek,  a  complexion 
clear  as  the  heavenly  light ; " a  and  another,  less  near  to  him,  but 
who  knew  him  well,  speaks  of  a  "  magnificent  form,  crowned 
with  a  princely  head,  that  in  his  last  years  was  thickly  covered 
with  snowy  hair." s 

Such  was  the  man  who,  in  an  instant,  was  snatched  away 
from  a  community  that  had  known  and  trusted  and  honored 
him  from  his  earliest  manhood.  By  Mr.  Webster  his  loss  was  felt 
to  be  irreparable ;  nor  was  it  ever  repaired.  Valued  friends, 
dear  and  trusted  friends,  he  still  had,  and  others  came  afterward 
to  be  acquired.  But  that  tie — that  fraternal  tie — stretching 
backward  to  the  old  days  of  their  self-sacrificing  parents,  to 
their  youthful  struggles  for  education,  to  their  early  successes, 
and  forward  into  the  unbounded  mutual  confidence  of  their  ma- 
turer  years,  could  not  be  replaced.  Mr.  "Webster  never  sought 
the  advice  of  any  man  as  he  sought  that  of  his  brother.  At  the 
time  of  his  brother's  death  he  was  peculiarly  dependent  on  him, 
as  we  have  seen.  Was  it  not  true,  as  I  have  already  said,  that 
he  was  severely  tried  ? 


[TO  MR.  MASON.] 

"  BOSTON,  April  19, 1829. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  letter.  You  do  not  and 
cannot  overrate  the  strength  of  the  shock  which  my  brother's  death  has 
caused  me.  I  have  felt  but  one  such  in  life ;  and  this  follows  so  soon  that 
it  requires  more  fortitude  than  I  possess  to  bear  it  with  firmness,  and,  per 
haps,  as  I  ought.  I  am  aware  that  the  case  admits  no  remedy,  nor  any 
present  relief;  and  endeavor  to  console  myself  with  reflecting  that  I  have 

1  I  have  already  referred  to  the  beau-          9  Letter  to  Mr.  Blatchford,  Correspond- 

tiful  memoir  of  Mr.  Ezekiel  Webster,  by  ence,  ii.,  228. 

Professor  Sanborn,  embraced  in  the  first          3  Quoted  by  Professor  Sanborn,  in  his 

volume  of  Mr.  Daniel  Webster's  Corre-  Memoir, 
spondence. 


344  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XV. 

had  much  happiness  with  lost  connections,  and  that  they  must  expect  to 
lose  beloved  objects  in  this  world  who  have  beloved  objects  to  lose.  My 
life,  I  know,  has  been  fortunate  and  happy  beyond  the  common  lot,  and  it 
would  be  now  ungrateful,  as  well  as  unavailing,  to  repine  at  calamities  of 
which,  as  they  are  human,  I  must  expect  to  partake.  But,  I  confess,  the 
world,  at  present,  has  for  me  an  aspect  any  thing  but  cheerful.  With  a 
multitude  of  acquaintance,  I  have  few  friends  ;  my  nearest  intimacies  are 
broken,  and  a  sad  void  is  made  in  the  objects  of  affection.  Of  what  re 
mains  dear  and  valuable,  I  need  not  say  that  a  most  precious  part  is  the 
affectionate  friendship  of  yourself  and  family.  I  want  to  see  you  very 
much,  indeed,  but  know  not  whether  I  shall  be  able  soon  to  visit  Ports 
mouth.  You  will  be  glad  to  know  that  my  own  health  is  good.  I  have 
never,  for  ten  years,  got  through  a  winter  without  being  more  reduced  in 
health  and  strength.  My  children,  also,  are  well.  Edward  is  at  Boscawen, 
where  he  will  probably  stay  through  the  summer,  or  as  long  as  the  family 
may  be  kept  together  there.  Daniel  hopes  to  go  to  college  in  August. 
Julia  proposes  to  pass  the  summer,  or  a  part  of  it,  with  Mrs.  Lee,  and  must 
afterward  be  disposed  of  as  best  she  may. 

"This  occurrence  is  calculated  to  have  effect  on  the  future  course  of  my 
own  life,  and  to  add  to  the  inducements,  already  felt,  to  retire  from  a  situ 
ation  in  which  I  am  making  daily  sacrifices,  and  doing  little  good  to  myself 
or  others.  Pray  give  my  love  to  your  family. 

"  Yours,  affectionately  and  entirely, 

WEBSTEB." 


A  considerable  part  of  the  ensuing  summer  was  passed  by 
Mr.  "Webster  in  the  new  cares  and  duties  which  the  death  of  his 
brother  devolved  upon  him.  He  was  now  the  sole  survivor  of 
a  large  family.  The  farm  at  Franklin,  thenceforward  to  have 
a  melancholy  attraction  for  him,  because  there  were  the  tombs 
of  his  parents  and  of  his  brothers  and  sisters,  became  his  own 
property,  by  an  arrangement  with  the  guardian  of  his  brother's 
children.  His  inclination  at  this  time  to  retire  from  public  life 
was  almost  insurmountable.  But  the  depressing  feeling,  that  he 
was  doing  little  good  to  compensate  for  the  sacrifices  that  he 
was  making,  .was  not  destined  to  last  long.  There  was  awaiting 
him  one  of  those  opportunities  and  duties  which  occur  but  once 
'in  the  life  of  any  statesman  ;  when  he  was  to  perform  that  public 
service  which  constitutes,  perhaps,  the  greatest  of  his  senatorial 
achievements,  and  which  has  forever  connected  his  name  with 
the  security  and  perpetuation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States. 

There  was  also  awaiting  him  a  very  important  and  happy 


1829.1  SECOND  MARRIAGE.  345 

change  in  his  domestic  condition.  In  the  autumn  of  1829  he 
passed  a  considerable  time  in  the  city  of  New  York,  for  profes 
sional  purposes,  and,  of  course,  he  was  a  much-honored  guest  in 
its  best  circles.  Although  such  a  connection  was  not  long  an 
ticipated,1  he  was  married  in  December,  to  Miss  Caroline  Le 
Koy,  the  second  daughter  of  Jacob  Le  Eoy,  Esq.,  a  wealthy 
merchant,  descended  from  one  of  the  early  settlers  of  New  York. 
This  event  was  thus  announced  to  his  eldest  son,  who  was  then 
a  Freshman  in  Harvard  College : 


[TO  MR.   FLETCHER  WEBSTER.] 

"  NEW  YORK,  December  14, 1829. 

"  MY  DEAR  SON  :  You  have  been  informed  that  an  important  change 
in  my  domestic  condition  was  expected  to  take  place.  It  happened  on 
Saturday.  The  lady  who  is  now  to  bear  the  relation  of  mother  to  you, 
and  Julia,  and  Edward,  I  am  sure  will  be  found  worthy  of  all  your  affec 
tion  and  regard ;  and  I  am  equally  certain  that  she  will  experience  from 
all  of  you  the  utmost  kindness  and  attachment.  She  insists  on  taking 
Julia  with  us  to  Washington,  thinking  it  will  be  better  for  her,  and  that 
she  will  also  be  good  company. 

"  We  shall  leave  New  York  in  about  a  week.  I  read  your  first  letter, 
which  gave  me  pleasure,  and  hope  to  have  another  from  you  before  I  leave 
New  York.  You  will  not  fail  to  write  me  once  a  week,  according  to  ar 
rangement.  The  enclosed  note  you  will  of  course  answer.  If  you  dispatch 
your  answer  at  once,  without  waiting  for  the  keepsake,  it  will  arrive  here 
before  our  departure.  Let  it  come  enclosed  to  me.  The  'keepsake'  is 
an  elegant  gold  watch.  You  must  send  for  it  to  Mr.  Paige,  by  a  careful 
hand.  Mr.  Paige  will  not  be  home  under  ten  days  from  this  time. 

"I  hope,  my  dear  son,  that  I  shall  continue  to  hear  good  accounts 
of  you. 

"  I  am  always,  with  much  affection,  your  father, 

"D.  WEBSTER." 

1  [To  Mrs.  E.  WEBSTER.]     "  I  parted  I  ever  saw  it,   and   she  is    much  at- 

with  you,  I  think,  the  first  day  of  Oc-  tached  to  her  new  mother.     With  this 

tober,  not  at  all  foreseeing  what  was  to  last  personage  I  am  sure  you  will  be 

happen  to  myself  in  so  short  a  time,  pleased.      You  will  find    her  amiable, 

I  am  now  here  settled  down  for  the  affectionate,  prudent,  and  agreeable ;  as 

session,  with  Mrs.  Webster  and  Julia,  these  are  good,  sober  words,  you  must 

When  I  left  home  I  did  not  expect  to  take  them  as  used  for  what  they  ought 

bring  Julia    farther    than    New  York,  to  mean,  and  not  as  the  rhapsody  of 

She  was    to  have    returned  with    Mr.  a  new  husband.     It  will  not  be  many 

Paige ;  but  Mrs.  Webster  chose  to  have  months,  however,  I  hope,  before  I  shall 

it  otherwise,  and  I  believe  it  is  much  bring  her  and  yourself  face  to  face,  and 

better  as  it  is.     Julia    seems  exceed-  then  you  can  judge  for  yourself." — ( Cor- 

ingly  happy.     Her  health  is  better  than  respondtnce,  i.,  484.) 


346  •  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XY. 

In  the  month  of  June  of  this  year  occurred  the  visit  of  Mr. 
"Wirt  to  Boston,  on  a  professional  engagement,  in  which  lie  was 
employed  as  the  leading  counsel  against  Mr.  Webster,  in  a  cause 
of  some  importance  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts. 
Mr.  Wirt's  gratification  at  his  reception  by  Mr.  Webster  is  ex 
pressed  in  the  warmest  terms  in  his  letters,  given  in  his  Life  by 
Mr.  Kennedy.1 

1  Kennedy's  Life  of  Wirt,  ii.,  268-272. 


1830.]  POWER  OF  REMOVAL  FROM  OFFICE.  347 


CHAPTEE   XYI. 

1829-1830. 

POWER     OF     REMOVAL     FROM     OFFICE NULLIFICATION THE     TWO 


AT  the  first  session  of  the  Twenty-first  Congress,  one 
of  the  subjects  that  earliest  demanded  Mr.  Webster's 
anxious  consideration  was  the  President's  supposed  power  to 
remove  the  incumbents  in  public  office  without  consulting  the 
Senate.  The  inauguration  of  General  Jackson  had  been  fol 
lowed  by  a  sweeping  change  in  the  executive  offices,  not  only 
in  all  the  departments  at  Washington,  but  throughout  the 
country.  The  state  of  things  thus  produced  at  the  capitol 
was  entirely  without  precedent ;  for,  while  it  had  always  been 
understood,  since  the  origin  of  the  Government,  that,  with 
every  change  of  the  person  of  the  President,  the  new  Executive 
was  at  liberty  to  select  new  heads  of  the  principal  departments, 
because  those  officers  form  what  is  by  usage  called  the  "  Cabi 
net,"  it  had  never  been  customary  to  regard  the  subordinate 
places  as  a  fund  for  the  reward  of  personal  partisans,  or  to  re 
move  faithful  and  competent  public  servants  merely  because 
their  political  opinions  did  not  coincide  with  those  of  the  suc 
cessful  party.  The  wise  forbearance  that  had  been  exercised  by 
most  of  our  former  Presidents  had  left  in  the  several  subor 
dinate  stations  a  body  of  trained  and  experienced  men,  who 
possessed  the  knowledge  of  official  business  essential  to  the  suc 
cessful  working  of  any  government,  and  who  were,  in  general, 
men  of  unexceptionable  characters.  This  degree  of  permanency 


348  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

of  official  life  in  "Washington  formerly  had  an  important  influ 
ence  on  the  prosperity  and  growth  of  the  city ;  for  men  who  felt 
that  they  were  secure  in  their  places  so  long  as  they  properly 
discharged  their  duties  to  the  Government,  could  afford  to  seek 
permanent  homes  for  their  families  w^here  their  salaries  were 
earned.  All  this  was  suddenly  changed ;  and  it  was  changed 
with  a  disregard  of  the  claims  of  meritorious  public  servants, 
and  with  the  employment  of  excuses  to  effect  their  removal 
from  office,  on  which  all  candid  men,  of  whatever  political  con 
nection,  must  now  look  back  with  regret  and  disapprobation, 
as  a  course  alike  unworthy  of  those  who  then  assumed  the 
administration  of  the  Government,  and  injurious  to  the  future 
welfare  of  the  country.  In  multitudes  of  cases  it  w^as  not  pre 
tended  that  there  was  any  other  cause  for  the  removals  than 
the  demands  of  party.  It  wTas  a  very  common  occurrence  for  a 
secretary,  at  the  head  of  one  of  the  departments,  to  inform  a 
subordinate  that  no  complaint  could  be  made  of  the  manner  in 
which  he  had  discharged  his  duties,  but  that  the  place  was 
wanted  for  a  political  or  personal  friend ;  and,  where  this  kind 
of  frankness  was  not  used,  the  private  and  trivial  and  casual 
conversation  of  some  inferior  clerk,  involving  an  alleged  disre 
spect  toward  the  new  President,  and  often  reported  anony 
mously,  was  duly  laid  before  the  Cabinet,  and  gravely  acted 
upon.1  In  the  course  of  the  first  two  years  of  General  Jack 
son's  first  presidency  he  made  two  thousand  removals  from  office. 
The  influence  of  this  new  method  of  administration  on  the 
material  prosperity  of  the  city  of  Washington  was  the  least  of 
the  evils  that  attended  it.  The  opponents  of  President  Jack 
son's  government  saw  in  it  a  long  train  of  public  mischiefs ;  and 
scarcely  any  wise  man  will  now  question  that  they  were  right. 
But  whether  this  credit  will  be  generally  conceded  to  them  or 

1  I  state  these  miserable  facts,  with-  ment  will  hereafter  consider  themselves 

holding  names  and  particulars,  on  the  as  only  visitors  among  us,  and  not  make 

authority  of  a  letter,  written  to  Mr.  Web-  any  investment  in  real  estate.    We  al- 

ster  by  a  private  citizen  of  Washington,  ready  realize  the  influence  of  this  feeling. 

in  no  way  connected  with  the  Govern- 

ment.     It  bears  date  in  May,  1829;  so  ...  I  could  not  have  believed  that  your 

soon  had  the  "  reform "  done  its  work,  predictions  were  so  correct,   and   that 

The  writer  describes  a  total  suspension  your  foresight  was  so  extensive  as  I  now 

in  the  business  of  erecting  private  houses,  find  it  to  have  been."    But  it  is  scarcely 

and  observes  :  "  Confidence  in  the  stabil-  necessary  for  me  to  quote  private  testi- 

ity  of  office  is  so  much  shaken,  that  the  mony  to  that  which  has  long  been  histor- 

clerks  and  other  officers  of  the  Govern-  ical  and  notorious. 


1830.]  POWER   OF  REMOVAL  FROM   OFFICE.  349 

not,  they  considered  it  their  duty  to  subject  to  close  public 
scrutiny  the  question  whether  the  President  possesses,  under 
the  Constitution,  power  to  remove  a  subordinate  civil  officer 
without  assigning  a  cause  to  the  Senate,  and  without  taking  its 
assent. 

It  must  be  regarded  as  a  strong  proof  of  Mr.  Webster's  fair 
ness  of  mind,  and  of  his  unwillingness  to  assert  an  extreme 
principle  for  party  objects,  that,  in  the  midst  of  such  a  state  of 
things  as  had  been  produced  by  the  course  of  General  Jackson's 
Administration,  he  approached  this  question  with  very  great 
deliberation,  and,  finally,  formed  opinions  concerning  it  con 
trary  to  his  original  views.  If  the  question,  in  1830,  had  been 
entirely  new,  he  would  have  held  that  the  power  of  removal, 
as  a  distinct  power,  and  as  residing  in  the  President  alone, 
does  not  exist.  This  was  his  own  opinion,  as  it  was  also  that 
of  Chancellor  Kent,  apart  from  the  construction  that  had  been 
put  upon  the  Constitution  by  some  precedents,  by  a  declaratory 
resolution  of  Congress,  in  1789,  and  by  an  acquiescence  of  half 
a  century.  It  is  true  that  Mr.  Webster  might  have  argued 
down  the  precedents,  which  were  not  numerous,  and  not  of 
great  force  ;  while  the  cases  before  him  were  enormous  in 
number,  and  flagrantly  unjust ;  some  of  them  comprehending 
men  of  entire  fitness  and  capacity,  who,  to  official  merit,  added 
the  strongest  of  claims  upon  the  country  for  Revolutionary  ser 
vices.  He  might  have  contended  that  the  congressional  con 
struction  of  the  Constitution,  by  the  First  Congress,  besides 
being  wrong  in  the  abstract,  had  been  given  when  no  such 
sweeping  and  irresponsible  power,  as  was  now  exercised,  had 
ever  been  claimed  for  the  President ;  and  he  might  have  urged 
that  the  public  acquiescence  had  never  related  to  any  but  ex 
treme  cases  of  public  exigency,  arising  from  incapacity  or  mis 
conduct.  But  it  was  not  his  habit  to  be  ingenious  in  con 
sidering  how  the  Constitution  ought  to  be  construed.  He  felt 
bound  to  remember  that  the  Constitution  expressly  provides 
for  the  action  of  the  Senate  only  when  an  appointment  is  to  be 
made ;  and  although  it  may  fairly  be  argued  that  this  power 
of  appointment  determines  the  pleasure  of  the  appointment  when 
all  else  is  silent,  and,  consequently,  that  the  President  alone 
cannot  terminate  an  appointment,  and  call  upon  the  Senate  to 


350 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[On.  XVI. 


confirm  a  new  nominee  without  making  the  cause  of  the  re 
moval  of  the  old  incumbent  a  part  of  the  question  of  such  new 
appointment  ;  yet,  that  this  course  of  reasoning,  although 
strictly  logical,  was  too  abstract  to  countervail  what  had  oc 
curred  since  the  Constitution  went  into  operation.  He  there 
fore,  in  what  he  said  in  the  Senate  in  1830,  and  ever  afterward, 
refrained  from  denying  the  President's  power  to  remove  from 
office  without  the  consent  of  the  Senate ;  and  maintained  that 
the  abuses  of  this  power  were  mischiefs  to  be  corrected  by 
public  sentiment ;  or,  in  a  case  of  extreme  corruption,  by  the 
power  of  impeachment.  This  was  the  view  of  Mr.  Madison, 
who  held  that  the  President's  power  exists  in  cases  of  clear  and 
absolute  necessity,  but  that  its  exercise  in  any  other  case  is  an 
abuse,.1 


1  The  most  plausible  ground  on  which 
to  vindicate  the  political  application  of 
the  too  famous  maxim,  that  "  to  the  vic 
tors  belong  the  spoils,"  is  this — Parties 
are  organized  in  free  and  elective  gov 
ernments,  in  order  to  give  effect  in  ad 
ministration  to  certain  political  opinions, 
which  those  who  lead  in  political  action 
sincerely  hold  to  be  essential  to  the  pub 
lic  interest,  which  is  a  much  larger  ob 
ject  than  the  individual  interest  of  any 
office-holder.  The  public  patronage  is  a 
powerful  means  of  influencing  men  to 
labor  for  the  success  of  certain  political 
opinions  ;  and,  if  the  power  to  use  it 
for  this  purpose  exists  in  the  constitu 
tional  arrangements  of  official  power, 
such  use  is  legitimate,  because  the  pa 
tronage,  in  the  hands  of  those  who  use  it, 
is  an  instrument  for  the  promotion  of 
the  public  good  according  to  the  judg 
ment  of  those  who  have  the  official  right 
to  shape  the  measures  of  Government. 
Without  considering  how  far  this  reason 
ing  borrows  aid  from  the  maxim  that 
the  end  justifies  the  means — a  rule  that 
is  wholly  unprincipled,  and  generally  pro 
ductive  of  mischief  when  it  is  resorted 
to^it  is  clear  that  it  overlooks  some 
very  important  things  which  are  true, 
and  assumes  some  things  which  are  not 
true.  In  the  first  place,  it  makes  no  ac 
count  of  the  direct  tendency  of  such  a 
principle  of  action  to  render  the  political 
principles  of  parties  matters  of  subordi 
nate,  and  the  enjoyment  of  public  pa 
tronage  a  matter  of  primary,  concern 
with  the  electors.  We  know,  as  a  mat 


ter  of  fact,  that  candidates  have  been 
elected  who  would  not  have  succeeded, 
and  that  parties  have  triumphed  whose 
principles  would  not  have  received  the 
sanction  of  the  people,  if  this  kind  of  cor 
ruption  had  been  kept  out  of  our  elec 
tions.     We  know  this,  because  we  know 
that  there  have  been  successful  candi 
dates  who  were  without  superior  merit, 
and  successful  parties  whose  principles 
and  measures  were  unworthy  of  popular 
support,  and  have  proved  to  be  mis 
chievous.     In  the  next  place,  this  rea 
soning  disregards  the  fact  that  the  offices 
of  a  great  government  will  be  less  well 
filled  when  they  are  made  a  reward  for 
the  party  services  of  the  most  active  and 
energetic  politicians ;  for  the  simple  rea 
son  that  this  class  of  men  will  rarely  em 
brace  the  most  competent  of  those  who 
may  desire    public    office   as   a  means 
of  livelihood.      In  the  third  place,  fre 
quent  and  periodical  changes  in  all  the 
administrative  offices  of  a  great  govern 
ment  deprive  it  of  the  strength  that  is 
derived  from  accumulated  official  experi 
ence   and   knowledge,   and    render   any 
proper   system   of  promotion   impracti 
cable.    Finally,  a  general  degradation  of 
the  tone  of  political  discussion  and  ac 
tion  is  sure  to  take  place  under  a  gov 
ernment  in  which  the  public  patronage 
is  thus  used.     All  these  evils  our  ex 
perience  has  proved  ;  and  when  they  are 
connected,  as  they  are,  both  as  cause 
and  effect,  with  the  system  of  nominat 
ing  candidates  for  the  chief  executive 
office  by  party  conventions,  on  the  prin- 


1830.]  NULLIFICATION.  351 

But  a  far  deeper  question — one  that  concerned  the  particular 
interests  of  no  party,  and  that  involved,  in  truth,  the  continued 
existence  of  the  Government — soon  but  not  unexpectedly 
claimed  of  Mr.  Webster  services  of  a  very  peculiar  character. 
It  may  be  justly  said  of  General  Jackson,  that  if  he  was  not  the 
only  man  in  the  country  who,  in  the  executive  office,  could 
have  met  the  crisis  of  1830-'33  as  it  required  to  be  met,  yet  that 
it  was  fortunate  for  the  country  that  a  person  of  his  inflexible 
firmness  and  perfect  courage  was  then  in  the  office  of  Presi 
dent  ;  and  it  should  for  similar  reasons  be  said  of  Mr.  Webster, 
that  he  was  better  fitted  than  any  other  man  in  the  Union  to 
encounter  in  debate  the  new  doctrines  that  now  threatened  the 
overthrow  of  the  Constitution,  and  that  it  was,  therefore,  as  for 
tunate  that  he  was  still  a  member  of  the  Senate  as  it  was  that 
General  Jackson  was  President.  If  he  had  not  been  there, 
it  can  scarcely  be  imagined  that  the  hands  of  the  Executive 
could  have  been  strengthened  by  the  public  refutation  of  a 
heresy  which  threatened  a  direct  obstruction  to  the  laws  of 
the  United  States ;  a  refutation  that  was  the  necessary  forerun 
ner  to  executive  action,  in  a  Government  largely  dependent 
upon  popular  opinion  and  inevitably  influenced  by  it. 

It  is  difficult  to  account  for  the  origin  and  growth  of  what 
were  called  the  doctrines  of  nullification,  which  originated  in 
South  Carolina,  without  touching  upon  the  peculiar  mental 
characteristics  of  one  of  her  statesmen,  who  was  their  reputed 
author,  and  who,  by  his  great  abilities,  the  purity  of  his  per 
sonal  character,  and  the  persuasiveness  of  his  address,  exercised 
a  vast  influence  over  many  of  the  public  men  of  his  time. 

ciple  of  availability,  it  is  impossible  to  no  one  would  be  hardy  enough  to  justify 
deny,  and  not  easy  to  exaggerate,  the  in-  this  use  of  the  public  money.  How, 
jury  that  has  been  done  to  our  political  then,  is  the  practice  any  more  to  be  jus- 
institutions.  That  injury  is  a  direct  refu-  tified  which  makes  use  of  the  whole 
tation  of  the  claim  that  the  success  of  body  of  existing  and  necessary  offices  as 
the  principles  of  a  party  is  an  object  that  a  fund  for  the  reward  of  partisan  ser- 
justifies  the  use  of  such  means  of  attain-  vices  on  a  change  of  parties  ?  As  a  gen- 
ing  it.  Nor  is  it  true,  as  the  justifi-  eral  rule,  it  may  be  quite  right  for  an  ad- 
cation  assumes,  that  such  means  are  ministration,  in  case  of  a  vacancy,  to 
within  the  legitimate  control  of  those  prefer  a  political  supporter  to  a  political 
who  hold  the  executive  power  for  the  opponent.  But  this  is  a  very  different 
time  being.  If  a  party  in  power  were  to  proceeding  from  the  creation  of  thou- 
make  a  ^ great  and  unnecessary  increase  sands  of  vacancies,  in  order  to  bring  the 
of  public  offices,  by  regular  enactment  influence  of  public  station  and  of  the 
of  law,  for  the  purpose  of  securing  the  public  money  to  bear  on  future  elec- 
predominance  of  its  political  principles,  tions. 


352 


LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[Cii.  XVI. 


In  May,  1828,  a  meeting  of  the  South  Carolina  delegation 
in  Congress  was  held  in  Washington,  at  the  rooms  of  General 
Hayne,  one  of  the  Senators  of  that  State,  to  concert  measures 
against  the  tariff  and  the  protective  policy  which  it  embodied. 
From  the  history  of  the  times,  and  the  disclosures  subsequently 
made,  it  is  apparent  that  some  violent  things  were  said  at  this 
meeting,  but  it  broke  up  without  any  definite  plan.  In  the  course 
of  the  following  summer,  there  were  many  popular  meetings 
in  South  Carolina,  largely  attended,  at  wrhich  the  tariff  of  1824 
was  treated  as  an  act  of  despotism  and  usurpation,  which  ought 
to  be  openly  resisted.  The  tone  of  these  meetings  was  not  un 
like  that  which  has  since  been  heard  elsewhere,  when  laws  of 
the  United  States  have  been  distasteful  to  local  feelings  or  in 
conflict  with  local  interests.  They  occasioned  anxiety  and 
regret  among  the  friends  of  the  Union  throughout  the  country, 
though  nothing  more.  But,  in  the  autumn,  the  Legislature  of 
South  Carolina  adopted  an  "  Exposition  and  Protest,"  1  which 


1  In  a  memorandum  now  before  me, 
in  Mr.  Webster's  handwriting,  I  find  the 
following  analysis  of  this  document : 

"But  the  most  bold  and  imposing 
form  in  which  the  doctrine  of  nullifica 
tion  has  been  presented,  is  doubtless  to 
be  found  in  the  Exposition  and  Protest 
of  the  Legislature  of  South  Carolina  in 
December,  1828.  It  seems  to  have  been 
judged  expedient  at  that  time  to  put 
forth  the  nullifying  power  of  the  State  in 
bold  relief.  This  exposition  is  a  labored 
argument  for  the  power  of  nullification  ; 
and,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  its  train 
of  reasoning,  its  conclusions  and  results 
are  at  least  clearly  stated.  Its  purpose 
is  not  disguised.  The  general  under 
standing  assigns  its  authorship,  not  to 
the  committee,  but  to  a  distinguished 
citizen  of  South  Carolina,  holding  at  pres 
ent  a  very  high  place  in  the  Government 
of  the  United  States. 

"  The  doctrines  clearly  announced  in 
it  are :  1.  That  it  is  a  most  erroneous  and 
dangerous  proposition  to  maintain  that 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
has  constitutional  authority  to  decide  on 
the  extent  of  the  powers  of  a  State  gov 
ernment;  its  decisions  being  final  only 
when  applied  to  the  authorities  of  the 
departments  of  the  General  Govern 
ment.  2.  That  '  universal  experience ' 
(lest  we  should  seem  to  do  the  distin 


guished  author  injustice,  we  cite  the  very 
words) — that  '  universal  experience,  in 
all  ages  and  countries,  teaches  that  power 
can  only  be  met  by  power,  and  not  by 
reason  and  justice,  and  that  all  restrictions 
on  authority,  unsustained  by  any  equal 
antagonist  power,  must  forever  prove 
wholly  insufficient  in  practice.  Such,'  he 
adds,  '  also  has  been  the  decisive  proof 
of  our  own  short  experience.'  3.  That 
the  right  of  judging  and  finally  deciding 
on  the  extent  of  their  own  powers  is  an 
essential  attribute  of  sovereignty,  of 
which  the  States  are  not  and  cannot  b§ 
divested.  4.  That  power  being  divided 
between  the  General  Government  and  the 
State  governments,  it  is  impossible  to 
deny  to  the  States  the  right  to  decide  on 
the  infraction  of  their  own  rights,  and  the 
proper  remedy  to  be  applied  for  their  cor 
rection.  5.  '  But  the  existence,'  here 
we  quote  the  very  words  again,  lest  it 
should  seem  incredible  that  such  a  posi 
tion  had  been  taken — '  but  the  existence 
of  the  right  of  judging  of  their  powers, 
clearly  established  from  the  sovereignty 
of  the  States,  as  clearly  implies  A  VETO 

OR  CONTROL  ON  THE  ACTION  OF  THE  GEN 
ERAL  GOVERNMENT,  on  contested  points 
of  authority ;  and  this  very  control  is  the 
remedy  which  the  Constitution  has  pro 
vided  to  prevent  the  encroachment  of  the 
General  Government  on  the  reserved  rights 


1830.]  NULLIFICATION.  353 

• 

gave  form  and  substance  to  the  doctrines  which  thenceforward 
became  known  as  "  Nullification."  In  order  to  understand 
them,  however,  as  a  theory  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  it  is 
necessary  to  state  the  theory  to  which  they  are  opposed,  and  to 
overthrow  which  they  were  brought  forward. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States,  under  the  Constitu 
tion,  had  hitherto  been  administered  upon  the  principle  that 
the  extent  of  its  powers  is  to  be  finally  determined  by  its 
supreme  judicial  tribunal,  not  only  when  there  is  any  conflict 
of  authority  between  its  several  departments,  but  also  when  the 
authority  of  the  whole  Government  is  denied  by  one  or  more  of 
the  States.  According  to  the  view  of  the  framers  of  the  Consti 
tution,  the  General  Government  was  endowed  with  a  judicial 
department,  and  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  passed  in  pur 
suance  of  it  were  made  the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  for  the 
very  purpose  of  withdrawing  from  the  States  all  final  cogni 
zance  of  questions  relating  to  the  extent  of  the  powers  of  Con 
gress.  If  there  had  been  any  opinions  supposed  to  have  been 
entertained  by  important  persons,  that  were  in  conflict  with 
this  theory,  prior  to  1830,  that  supposition  perhaps  had  its 
origin  in  erroneous  constructions  of  the  public  documents  in 
which  such  opinions  were  alleged  to  be  found.  For  example, 
the  famous  Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions  of  1798,  which 
had  asserted  the  right  and  duty  of  the  States  to  interpose,  in  a 
case  of  "  deliberate,  palpable,  and  dangerous  "  exercise  of  powers 
not  granted  to  the  General  Government  by  the  Constitution, 
had  not  distinctly  asserted,  as  the  opinion  of  their  authors,  that 
there  could  be  a  constitutional  interposition  by  a  State,  in  the 
shape  of  resistance  to  the  execution  of  a  law  enacted  by  Con 
gress,  whenever  the  State  believed  such  a  law  to  be  an  exercise 
of  power  not  warranted  by  the  Constitution.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  was  language  in  those  resolutions  which  seemed  to 

of  the  States.'1  6.  The  practical  result  of  mittee  do  not  in  the  least  doubt,  and 
the  foregoing  doctrines  is  then  stated  in  they  are  equally  clear  in  the  existence  of  a 
the  following  words :  '  That  there  exists  necessity  to  justify  its  exercise,  if  the  Gen- 
a  case  (the  tariff)  which  would  justify  the  eral  Government  should  continue  to  per- 
interposition  of  this  State,  and  thereby  sist  in  its  improper  assumption  of  powers 
compel  the  General  Government  to  aban-  belonging  to  the  State ;  which  brings 
don  an  unconstitutional  power,  or  to  them  to  the  last  point  which  they  pro- 
make  an  appeal  to  the  amending  power  pose  to  consider — When  would  it  be 
to  confer  it  by  express  grant,  the  com-  proper  to  exercise  this  high  power  ?  ' " 
24 


354  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

imply  a  right  to  resort  to  forcible  resistance,  their  principal 
authors  had  not  sanctioned  an  interpretation  which  would  look 
to  any  other  right  of  resistance  than  that  which  is  commonly 
described  as  the  right  of  revolution,  and  which  is  allowed  to  be 
held  in  reserve  by  all  communities  against  acts  of  intolerable 
oppression. 

But  aside  from  the  authority  of  these  resolutions — an  author 
ity  that  was  doubtful,  because  their  interpretation  was  not  clear 
—there  had  been  no  important  assertion  of  the  principle  that  a 
State  can  determine  for  its  citizens  whether  they  are  to  obey  .an 
act  of  Congress,  by  asserting  its  unconstitutional  character,  and 
that  the  right  to  do  this  is  implied  as  a  right  inherent  in  a 
State,  under  the  Constitution,  and  results  from  the  nature  of 
the  Government.  This,  however,  was  what  the  advocates  of 
nullification  now  undertook  to  establish.  The  remedy  which 
they  sought,  against  acts  which  they  regarded  as  usurpations, 
was  not  revolution,  and  not  the  breaking  up  the  Union,  as  they 
claimed ;  but  it  was  a  remedy  which  they  held  to  exist  within 
the  Union,  and  to  have  been  contemplated  by  the  people  of  the 
States  when  they  established  the  Constitution.  How  far  they 
considered  such  a  theory  compatible  with  the  continued  exist 
ence  of  the  Union,  I  am  not  aware  that  they  undertook  to  ex 
plain.  Having  obtained  the  means  of  resisting  one  exercise  of 
authority  by  the  General  Government,  it  was  clear  that  the 
same  rule  would  serve  to  defeat  any  other. 

Such  was  the  foundation  and  such  was  the  doctrine  of  the 
asserted  right  of  nullification.  It  assumed  that  the  Constitu 
tion,  by  reserving  to  the  States,  or  the  people,  all  the  powers 
not  vested  in  the  General  Government,  contemplated  some 
means  of  checking  and  controlling  the  action  of  that  Govern 
ment  on  contested  points  of  authority.  It  assumed  that  the 
Constitution,  being  only  a  compact  between  sovereign  States, 
all  questions  respecting  the  extent  of  the  powers  conferred  by  it 
necessarily  touched  the  extent  and  nature  of  the  powers  re 
served  to  the  States.  It  assumed  that  the  right  of  judging  and 
finally  deciding  on  their  own  reserved  powers  was  an  essential 
attribute  of  sovereignty  of  which  the  States  had  not  been  and 
could  not  be  deprived ;  and  hence  it  declared  that  the  control 
by  State  interposition  was  the  remedy  which  the  Constitution 


1830.]  NULLIFICATION.  355 

had  contemplated  to  prevent  the  encroachments  of  the  General 
Government  on  the  reserved  rights  of  the  States. 

Although  the  Legislature  of  South  Carolina  had  thus  pro 
pounded  a  theory  of  resistance,  and  held  that  there  was  then  a 
case  in  the  tariff  which  would  justify  a  resort  to  it,  no  steps 
were  yet  taken  toward  the  immediate  exercise  of  the  asserted 
power.  Whether  these  doctrines  were  introduced  afterward 
into  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  as  in  the  nature  of  a 
warning,  or  were  brought  there  without  premeditation,  it  is 
a  fact  that,  on  the  29th  of  December  (1829),  Mr.  Foote,  a 
Senator  from  Connecticut,  introduced  a  resolution  to  inquire 
respecting  the  sales  and  surveys  of  the  "Western  lands.  Mr. 
Webster  was  then  absent  from  Washington,  but  he  took  his 
seat  in  the  Senate  two  days  afterward.  An  important  discus 
sion  of  this  resolution  took  place,  which  continued  at  intervals, 
but  without  eliciting  any  thing  of  special  interest,  until  the  19th 
of  January.  On  that  day,  General  Hayne,  of  South  Carolina, 
delivered  an  elaborate  speech,  calling  in  question  the  conduct 
of  the  New-England  States  toward  the  interests  of  the  West ; 
accusing  them  of  a  selfish  design  to  retard  the  growth  of  the 
Western  States — a  design  originating,  he  said,  in  the  policy  of 
the  tariff,  which  required  the  New-England  States  to  keep  their 
population  from  emigrating  to  the  new  States ;  and  endeavor 
ing  to  show  that  there  existed  a  natural  sympathy  between  the 
Southern  and  Western  States,  upon  the  distribution  and  sale  of 
the  public  lands,  which  ought  to  make  those  sections  natural 
allies  against  the  tendencies  and  consequences  of  the  tariff 
policy. 

Such  a  tone  had  seldom  been  heard  in  the  Senate.  What 
ever  may  have  been  the  political  sins  and  failings  of  New  Eng 
land,  a  narrow  and  illiberal  policy  toward  the  West  had  not 
been  one  of  them ;  and  it  was  quite  new  in  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States,  at  that  day,  to  hear  appeals  made  to  a  supposed 
identity  of  sectional  interests  between  the  South  and  the  West, 
on  account  of  any  injustice  toward  either  of  them  on  the  part 
of  the  Eastern  States.  Mr.  Webster  entered  the  Senate  from 
the  Supreme  Court  just  as  Mr.  Hayne  rose  to  speak.  His  en 
gagements  in  the  court  were  at  that  time  pressing  and  impor 
tant,  and  he  had  no  thought  of  taking  part  in  this  debate  on 


356  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

tlie  public  lands.1  But  Mr.  Hayne's  speech  lie  considered 
worthy  of  a  reply,  and,  as  soon  as  that  gentleman  had  finished, 
he  rose  to  answer  it.  Mr.  Benton,  however,  after  compliment 
ing  Mr.  Hayne  on  his  speech,  moved  an  adjournment,  to  which 
Mr.  Webster  consented.  The  latter,  of  course,  was  entitled  to 
the  floor  on  the  next  day. 

On  that  day,  the  20th  of  January,  Mr.  Webster  delivered 
his  first  speech  on  Foote's  resolution,  which  is  now  contained  in 
the  third  volume  of  his  works.  The  notes  for  this  speech — all 
that  were  ever  made — were  prepared  in  the  night  of  the  19th, 
or  more  probably  on  the  morning  of  the  20th.2  They  are  now 
before  me.  They  'occupy,  loosely  written,  three  sheets  of  ordi 
nary  letter-paper.  The  speech,  as  it  was  delivered  and  report 
ed,  fills  more  than  twenty  pages  of  the  octavo  volume.  It  did 
not  follow  closely  the  written  notes.  On  the  contrary,  the 
notes  contain  minute  and  accurate  references  to  the  history  of 
the  public  lands  and  the  legislation  concerning  them,  which  no 
one,  not  as  familiar  with  the  subject  as  Mr.  "Webster  was,  could 
have  gathered  at  a  single  sitting.  It  seems  to  have  been  his 
purpose,  in  making  these  notes,  to  place  before  his  own  mind 
the  historical  facts  from  which  he  was  to  argue,  rather  than  to 
place  those  facts  in  their  details  before  the  Senate.  But  one~6f 
his  principal  purposes,  in  making  the  speech,  was  to  repel  the 
charge  made  by  Mr.  Hayne,  that  the  Government,  especially  so 
far  as  it  might  have  been  under  the  lead  of  New  England,  had 
acted  with  a  narrow  and  illiberal  policy  toward  the  West.  He 
had  no  thought  of  provoking  a  discussion  on  the  power  of  the 
General  Government  to  establish  tariffs  for  the  protection  of 
manufactures,  or  on  the  authority  of  the  Government  to  enforce 

1  The  important  controversy  between  before  most  people  were  abroad.      In 
John  Jacob  Astor  and  the  State  of  New  Washington,  he  could  be  frequently  seen 
York  was  to  come  on  in  the  Supreme  in  the  market-house,  before  any  other  in- 
Court  on  the  20th,  and  the  argument  was,  habitant  of  the  city,  conversing  with  the 
in  fact,  begun  on  that  day.     This  contro-  tradesmen  there,  and  securing  the  best 
versy  is  known  as  the  case  of  Carver's  choice  from  their  stalls.     Every  butcher, 
Lessee  vs.  Astor,  and  is  reported  in  the  and    fisherman,    and    country    produce- 
fourth  volume  of  Peters's  Reports.  dealer,  white  or  black,  man  or  woman, 

2  Mr.  Webster  was  always  an  early  free  or  slave,  knew  him  well.     Perhaps 
riser.     It  was  his  habit,  when  he  had  any  they  did  not  know  to  what  themes  his 
important  work  to  do,  to  rise  about  four  early  morning  chats   with    them    were 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  light  his  own  parentheses.     It  was  at  such  times,  how- 
fire,  and  continue  his   occupation  until  ever,  that  his  important  labor  was  chiefly 
the  hour  of  breakfast,  or  until  he  chose  performed  before  people  in  general  had 
to  go  out,  as  he  was  very  fond  of  doing,  begun  the  day. 


1830.]  REPLY  TO   HAYNE.  357 

its  laws  against  the  opposition  of  States ;  although,  he  did  in 
cidentally  allude  to  the  prevalence  of  opinions  and  feelings,  in 
some  quarters,  adverse  to  the  Union,  which,  he  said,  had  caused 
him  regret,  and  which  he  hoped  the  gentleman  from  South 
Carolina  did  riot  share. 

On  the  following  day,  January  21st,  Mr.  Chambers,  of  Mary 
land,  moved  an  adjournment  of  the  debate,  as  it  was  well  known 
that  Mr.  Webster  had  urgent  business  wrhich  required  him  to 
be  in  the  Supreme  Court.  Mr.  Hayne  objected,  saying : 

"  He  saw  the  gentleman  from  Massachusetts  in  his  seat,  and  presumed 
he  could  make  an  arrangement  that  would  enable  him  to  be  present  here 
during  the  discussion  to-day.  He  was  unwilling  that  this  subject  should 
be  postponed,  until  he  had  an  opportunity  of  replying  to  some  of  the  ob 
servations  which  had  fallen  from  the  gentleman  yesterday.  He  would  not 
deny  that  some  things  had  fallen  from  the  gentleman  which  rankled  here 
(touching  his  breast),  from  which  he  would  desire  at  once  to  relieve  him 
self.  The  gentleman  had  discharged  his  fire  in  the  face  of  the  Senate.  He 
hoped  he  would  now  afford  him  the  opportunity  of  returning  the  shot. 

"  Mr.  Webster :  I  am  ready  to  receive  it.    Let  the  discussion  proceed." 

Mr.  Benton  then  rose  and  finished  a  speech,  in  reply  to  Mr. 
Webster,  which  he  had  commenced  on  the  previous  day.  An 
adjournment  of  the  Senate  was  then  moved  and  negatived. 

Mr.  Hayne  then  commenced  his  reply  to  Mr.  Webster, 
which,  in  consequence  of  an  adjournment  of  the  debate,  he  did 
not  finish  until  Monday,  the  25th.  His  speech  ranged  through 
a  great  variety  of  topics.  He  assailed  ~New  England ;  called  in 
question  Mr.  Webster's  consistency,  and  depreciated  the  patriot 
ism  of  Massachusetts.  He  then  concluded  with  a  highly-in 
genious  and  acute  exposition  and  assertion  of  the  doctrines  of 
nullification.  One  part  of  Ijiespeech  was  caustic  and  extremely 
personal .  •  the  residueTwas  argumentative  and  able — so  able, 
thaF"without  immediate--  refutation  it  would  have  done  mis 
chief. 

Mr.  Webster  took  notes  while  Mr.  Hayne  was  speaking, 
and  manifestly  intended  a  rejoinder.  As  soon  as  Mr.  Hayne 
had  concluded,  he  rose,  but  an  adjournment  of  the  Senate 
was  moved,  which  gave  him  the  floor  for  the  next  day. 
This  discussion  had  now  been  going  on  for  so  long  a  time, 
that  strangers  had  come  to  the  capital  on  purpose  to  wit- 


358  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XYI. 

ness  it.  When  the  Senate-chamber  was  opened  on  the  morn 
ing  of  Tuesday,  the  26th  of  January,  the  galleries,  and  even  the 
floor,  therefore,  were  crowded.  Ladies  were  admitted  to  the  seats 
of  the  members,  and  such  was  the  extraordinary  eagerness  to  hear 
Mr.  Webster,  that  all  rules  had  to  give  way  to  the  interest  and 
importance  of  the  occasion.  The  House  of  Representatives  was 
so  deserted,  that  no  business  could  be  transacted,  although  the 
Speaker  remained  in  his  chair.  Every  inch  of  available  space 
within  the  Senate-chamber,  for  sitting  or  standing,  was  occu 
pied,  and  the  crowd  extended  out  into  the  lobbies  and  down  the 
staircases,  far  beyond  the  sound  of  Mr.  Webster's  voice.  He 
has  himself  said  that  he  "  never  spoke  in  the  presence  of  an 
audience  so  eager  and  so  sympathetic."1  In  truth,  that  great 
assembly,  composed  of  many  of  the  most  intelligent  and  culti 
vated  men  and  women  of  the  land,  felt  that,  on  that  day,  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  on  trial. 

On  this  occasion  Mr.  Webster  again  had  but  a  single  night 
in  which  to  make  preparation  to  answer  the  really  important 
parts  of  the  preceding  speech  of  his  opponent ;  for  that  speech 
was  not  concluded  until  a  late  hour  of  the  session  of  the  25th, 
and  it  was  on  that  day  that  General  Hayne  made  his  argument 
on  the  constitutional  right  of  State  nullification  of  the  laws  of 
the  United  States.  Such  written  preparation  as  Mr.  Webster, 
in  fact,  made  for  the  speech  that  is  called  his  "  Second  Speech 
on  Foote's  Resolution,"  and  which  embraces  the  celebrated 
answer  to  the  doctrines  of  nullification,  was  made  after  the 
adjournment  of  the  Senate  on  the  25th,  and  before  the  hour  of 
its  assembling  on  the  next  day.  These  notes  are  also  now  before 
me.  Like  those  which  he  prepared  for  the  "  First  Speech  on 
Foote's  Resolution,"  they  are  written  with  great  brevity  on 
common  letter-paper,  and  extend  through  five  sheets.  The 
printed  speech,  as  reported  by  a  stenographer,  fills  seventy 
pages  of  the  octavo  edition  of  Mr.  Webster's  Works.9  The  notes 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  494.  this  speech,  in  short-hand,  were  taken 

2  It  was  reported  by  Joseph  Gales,  by  Mr.  Gales,  the  senior  editor  of  the 
Esq.,  the  senior  editor  of  the  National  National  Intelligencer.     They  were  writ- 
Intelligencer,  who,  aware  of  the  impor-  ten  out  by  another  hand,  and  the  report 
tance  of  the  occasion,  and  being  himself  was  most  remarkably  accurate.    It  was  in 
an  accomplished  stenographer,  was  un-  the  possession  of  Mr.  Webster  a  part  of 
willing  to  intrust  this  duty  to  any  other  one  day  for  revision,  and  then  the  speech 
hand.     In  the  memorandum  above  re-  was  sent  to  the  press."    I  believe  the  re 
ferred  to,  Mr.  Webster  says  :  "  Notes  of  port  is  still  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  Gales. 


1830.]  REPLY  TO  HAYKE.  359 

contain  no  hint  of  the  impressive  exordium  with  which  the 
speech  was  opened.     They  commence  with  the  words  : 

"  No  man  hurt.    If  his  *  rankling'  is  relieved,  glad  of  it." 

"  I  have  no  '  rankling,'  fear,  anger,  consciousness  of  refutation." 

"  No  *  rankling,'  original  or  received — bow  not  strong  enough." 

It  has  been  said  that  Mr.  "Webster  needed  no  prepara 
tion  to  answer  the  heresy  of  nullification.  In  one  sense  this 
is  true.  From  his  first  entrance  into  public  life,  he  had 
been  familiar  with  the  historical  facts  on  which  any  true 
theory,  respecting  the  nature  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  must  be  based.  His  opinions  on  the  subject  had  been 
formed  long  before  the  crisis  of  1830-'33  had  arisen  ;  and  if  it 
is~to  be  suggested  that  those  opinions  were  such  as  were  usu 
ally  held  by  the  best  minds  in  New  England,  it  is  to  be  remem 
bered  that  they  constitute  the  sole  ground  on  which  the  su 
premacy,  claimed  by  the  Constitution  as  the  supreme  law  of  the 
land,  can  be  maintained.  His  long  experience,  too,  in  the 
argument  of  constitutional  questions  at  the  bar  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States,  commencing  in  1819,  had  given 
him  a  training  in  the  handling  of  such  subjects  which  few 
men  have  possessed  who  have  ever  taken  part  in  them •  and 
he  had,  what  few  great  lawyers  have  ever  had,  the  power  of 
adapting  himself  as  effectively  to  parliamentary  as  to  forensic 
discussion.  So  far,  therefore,  as  the  exigencies  of  this  occasion 
required  any  study  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  our  Consti 
tution,  Mr.  Webster's  preparation  was  made  long  before  this  oc 
casion  arose.  But  the  marshalling  of  his  subject  in  the  order  in 
which  it  was  necessary  to  treat  it,  the  special  answers  required 
by  the  special  arguments  of  his  adversary — the  conception  and 
the  framework  of  the  speech — all  this  did  require  labor,  and 
that  labor  was  performed  after  the  adjournment  of  the  Senate, 
late  on  the  25th,  and  before  it  reassembled  on  the  26th. 

At  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  "Webster's  argument,  on  the  26th 
of  January,  General  Hayne,  who  had  taken  notes,  rose  to  reply ; 
and  although  one  of  his  friends  proposed  an  adjournment,  he 
declined  to  avail  himself  of  it,  and  addressed  the  Senate  for  a 
short  time  upon  the  constitutional  question.  Mr.  "Webster  then 
rose  again,  and,  after  alluding  to  the  "  vain  attempt "  of  his 


360  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVI. 

opponent  to  "  reconstruct  his  shattered  argument,"  restated 
both  sides  of  the  controversy  with  great  force,  giving  General 
Hayne  the  benefit  of  that  clear  setting  forth  of  the  position  of 
an  adversary  which  none  could  do  better  than  Mr.  Webster, 
and  which  none  could  doubt  was  the  strongest  method  of  stat 
ing  it ;  and  then  following  it  step  by  step  with  the  appropriate 
answer.  This  was  the  reduction  of  the  whole  controversy  into 
the  severest  forms  of  logic. 

Mr.  "Webster's  "  Second  Speech  on  Foote's  Resolution,"  com 
prehending  the  memorable  reply  to  General  Hayne,  has  been 
compared  to  the  oration  of  Demosthenes  on  the  Crown.  That 
it  is  the  masterpiece  of  American  as  that  is  of  Grecian  debate, 
is,  perhaps,  not  questioned.  There  is,  too,  some  further  parallel 
between  them.  The  speech  of  the  great  Athenian  was  the 
public  defence  of  a  policy  with  which  his  own  reputation  had 
been  identified  for  a  period  of  twenty  years ;  and  this  personal 
element,  mingled  with  a  grand  patriotism  that  is  exceeded 
in  no  recorded  language,  gives  to  it,  as  we  read,  even  now, 
scarcely  less  than  the  interest  with  which  it  must  originally 
have  been  heard.  The  American  statesman  was  not,  indeed, 
called  upon  to  vindicate  his  claim  to  a  civic  crown ;  but  he  had 
to  defend  his  own  character  and  fame  as  a  man,  in  repelling  an 
attack  made  at  once  upon  himself  and  upon  the  region  of  the 
country  which  he  immediately  represented,  and  to  show  that 
the  course  of  the  Government,  whose  existence  was  threatened 
by  the  doctrines  advanced  by  his  opponent,  and  his  own  par 
ticipation  in  that  course,  had  been  national,  just,  and  pa 
triotic. 

The  first  portion,  therefore,  of  this  speech,  may  well  be  com 
pared  to  the  oration  of  Demosthenes,  and  it  will  not  suffer  by 
the  comparison.  But  here  the  parallel  ends :  for  the  American 
speech  was  no  funeral  eloge  over  the  dead  body  of  public  free 
dom,  as  the  Athenian's  was  over  the  lost  liberties  of  Athens  and 
of  Greece.  Demosthenes  spoke  to  his  countrymen  when  he 
could  only  speak  of  what  once  was,  when  he  could  recount  what 
he  had  wished  to  strive  against  Philip,  who  was  dead,  and  when 
the  living  and  terrible  son  of  Philip,  then  conquering  the  world, 
could  crush  Athens,  and  all  that  Athens  sheltered,  as  he  had 
crushed  Thebes.  The  American  statesman,  on  the  contrary, 


1830.]  REPLY  TO   HAYNE.  361 

had  to  deajjiotj>nJL^it.h  the  past,  but  with  the  present  and  the 
future ;  for  he  was^to  shojvj^^itltl^e^Tinciples  asserted  by  his 
opponent  were  a  true  explanation  of  the  political  Constitution 
of  the  £Quntry,  we  had  no  Constitution,  we  had  made  no  ad 
vance  from  the  inter-state  league  of  the  Revolutionary  period, 
and  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  notwithstanding  its 
nominally  direct  legislative  authority,  existed  at  the  pleasure 
and  was  subject  to  the  control  of  each  State,  jnjthis  respect — 
in  the  fact  that  the  accepted  character  of  a  great  government 
turned  on  an  argument  to  be  made  by  a  single  statesman  in  a 
public  body — this  speech  is  unlike  any  other  in  the  history  of 
^parliamentary  or  popular  eloquence. 

TliaT  such  was  the  crisis  is  apparent  from  all  that  had  gone 
before,  from  all  that  was  then  transpiring,  and  from  all  that  has 
since  followed.  If  the  doctrines  asserted  byjthe .statesman  of  South 
Carolina  had  not  been  triumphantly  answered  in  that  very  debate, 
it  would  have  been  in  vain  to  point  to  the  general  fact  that  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  had.. hitherto  been  adminis 
tered  upon  the  principle  that  its  powers  are  held  directly  of  the 
people,  and  that  they  are  not  subject  to  the  control  of  the  State    ^.^^ 
governments.     Such  had  been,  doubtless,  the  generally-receivecT 
judicial  and_jyjimm&tr-ative  interpretation;   but   the  opposite 
theory  had  been  now  brought  forward  in  a  very  imposing  form ;      ^J'  As 
in  fact,  in  an  attitude  of  direct  resistance  taken  by  a  State,  sup- 
ported~wit3T"great  dialectic  ability  by  men  of  high  and  pure 
personal  characters.     It  is  true  that  no  action  could  have  been 
taken  bythe  Senate,  a3  a^eoffi3r~to~^^  or  to 

reject  the  South  Carolina  doctrine ;  for  the  discussion  was  really 
foreign  to  the  question  actually  pending.  But  the  introduction 
of  the  doctrine  into  the  Senate  had  fixed  upon  it  the  attention 
of  the  whole  country,  and  when  Mr.  Webster  spoke,  he  spoke 
to  tEie'popuTar  tribunal  and  the  public  judgment,  as  well  as-toT^ 
the  adminfetTaEbrs  of  every  branch  of  the  Government.  Ac 
cording  to  his  success  or  his  failure  in  convincing  the  under 
standings  of  men  that  the  principles  of  State  interference  and 
nullification  were  wrong,  the  Government  would,  thenceforward 
be  able  or  unable  to  enforce  its  laws  through  its  own  judicial 
interpretation  ofHheir  constitutional  validity,  and  to  maintain 
or  not  to  maintain  the  Union  in  case  of  future  forcible  attempts 


362  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVI. 

to  break  it  up;  since  these  issues  in  truth  depended,  for  all 
future  time,  upon  the  popular  acceptance  of  the  one  "or  the  other 
theory  of  the  Constitution,  as  well  as  upon  the  convictions  of 
the  public  men  of  the  country  respecting  the  real  merits  of  this 
controversy.  The  results  that,  as  we  now  know,  followed  this 
discussion,  make  it  apparent  that  the  responsibility  of  Mr.  Web 
ster's  position  embraced  all  that  is  here  ascribed  to  it. 

He  comprehended  and  felt  this  in  its  full  force.  But  he  was 
always  equal  to  the  occasion,  whatever  it  might  be,  and  respon 
sibility  always  stimulated  his  powers  in  proportion  to  the  pres 
sure  that  came  upon  him.  As  he  approaches  this  part  of  the 
subject,  he  is  evidently  conscious  that  he  is  about  to  speak  to 
the  sense  of  the  whole  nation,  and  he  frames  his  argument  so 
that  it  may  be  comprehended  by  all  intelligent  msn^  as  well  as 
by  publicists  and  statesmen ;  using  in  this  consciousness  a 
"  studied  plainness  of  speech."  Throughout  the  argumentative 
portions  of  this  grand  division  of  the  speech,  he  employs  no 
reasoning  that  is  not  level  to  the  understanding  of  a  popular 
tribunal,  although  he  is  speaking  in  the  -presence  of  a  singularly 
intelligent  audience,  and  is  addressing  himself  immediately  to 
a  body  of  Senators ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  pecu 
liarities  of  this  speech  that,  upon  a  constitutional  question  of 
fundamental  law,  it  satisfies  alike  the  technical  and  the  untech- 
nical  intellect.  Nothing  short  of  this  could  have  accomplished 
the  work  he  had  to  do ;  for  we  can  now  see  that,  if  the  argu 
ment  had  failed  to  convince  the  popular  mind,  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  would  ere  this  have  been  numbered  among 
the  things  that  were. 

The  celebrated  peroration  of  this  speech  has  been  criticised 
as  too  elaborately  rhetorical ;  and  Mr.  Webster  once  made  this 
criticism  himself.  But  it  is,  in  the  first  place,  quite  certain  that 
it  was  unpremeditated,  and  was  drawn  from  him  in  the  excite 
ment  of  feeling  caused  by  the  evident  sympathies  of  the  great 
and  eager  audience,  of  both  sexes,  that  drank  in  every  word 
that  fell  from  him,  with  an  interest  so  intense  that  the  pleasure 
and  the  pain  of  listening  struggled  strangely  in  their  breasts. 
The  very  meagre  notes  from  which  he  spoke  contain  nothing  to 
show  that  he  had  previously  wrought  out  the  magnificent  pas 
sage  at  the  close  of  the  speech  which  was  soon  ringing  from  all 


1830.] 


REPLY  TO  HAYNE. 


363 


the  college  platforms  of  more  than  half  the  Union.1  In  the  next 
place,  it  is  to  be  observed  of  this  and  other  passages  of  similar 
eloquence  interspersed  through  the  argument  of  this  speech — 
of  which  his  "  brief "  affords  no  sign — that  if  they  had  been 
the  work  of  the  most  artistic  closet  preparation,  he  could  have 
done  nothing  better  adapted  to  fix  popular  attention  upon  the 
speech,  and  especially  to  give  it  that  hold  upon  the  popular 
heart,  and  that  interest  for  the  educated  youth  of  the  country, 
which  caused  it  to  do  its  work  in  after-years,  and  led  the  na 
tional  intellect  into  the  appreciation  and  acceptance  of  its  po 
litical  doctrine.  These  results  would  scarcely  have  followed  if 
there  had  gone  forth  nothing  more  than  an  argumentative  dis 
cussion  of  principles,  however  logical  and  convincing  the  state 
ment,  without  those  bursts  of  feeling,  highly  ornamented  and 
rhetorical  as  they  are,  which  sustain  the  interest  and  carry  along 
the  attention  of  the  common  reader.  Yet,  from  the  notes  which 
he  used,  one  would  have  expected  to  hear  nothing  but  a  very 


1  The  writer  of  a  life  of  Mr.  Webster, 
published  in  the  "  American  Biographical 
Library,"  has  made  the  following  asser 
tions  : 

"A  very  foolish  endeavor  has  been 
made,  by  some  of  Mr.  Webster's  friends, 
to  create  the  impression  that  the  great 
orations  and  speeches  which  have  carried 
his  celebrity  all  over  the  world  were 
made  with  little  effort  and  trifling  prepa 
ration.  Even  so  judicious  a  writer  as 
Mr.  Everett  seeks  to  confirm  the  state 
ment  of  Mr.  March,  that  the  reply  to 
Hayne  was  the  result  of  at  most  a  few 
hours'  reflection,  and  that  all  the  notes 
he  made  for  it  were  contained  upon  one 
side  of  a  sheet  of  paper.  This  latter 
statement  is  true,  so  far  as  the  notes 
from  which  he  spoke  are  concerned ;  but 
the  general  impression  conveyed  in  these 
representations  is  unjust  to  Mr.  Webster, 
and  calculated  to  induce  very  injurious 
theories  and  habits  in  the  minds  of  the 
young.  Mr.  Webster  had  prepared  him 
self  for  that  debate  with  all  his  usual 
care.  He  knew  a  fortnight  beforehand 
the  points  that  would  be  made,  the  posi 
tions  that  would  be  assumed,  and  the 
parties  that  would  be  assailed.  And  we 
have  no  doubt  that  all  those  magnificent 
passages,  which  live  in  the  memory  and 
glow  in  the  heart  of  all  who  read  them, 
were  prepared  beforehand  with  the  ut 
most  care,  and  the  nicest  discrimination 


in  the  choice  of  words.  And  the  same 
thing  is  certainly  true  of  many  other  of 
his  celebrated  speeches." 

I  have  no  theories  to  maintain  con 
cerning  Mr.  Webster's  capacity  to  make 
the  speech  in  question  with  compara 
tively  little  written  preparation.  His 
general  habits,  in  this  respect,  varied  a 
good  deal,  but  he  invariably  wrote  much 
less  than  most  public  speakers  commonly 
do,  unless  he  was  to  pronounce  one  of 
those  formal  discourses,  which  are  al 
ways  written ;  and,  when  these  came  to 
be  printed,  he  corrected  and  polished 
them  with  great  care.  With  regard  to 
the  Reply  to  Hayne,  as  well  as  the  First 
Speech  on  Foote's  Resolution,  I  have 
given  the  facts,  not  only  from  my  own 
examination  of  the  public  records,  but 
also  from  a  detailed  memorandum  which 
I  possess,  in  Mr.  Webster's  own  hand 
writing,  stating  the  whole  history  of  that 
debate.  In  this  paper  he  says :  "Itism- 
dent  that  the  occasion  was  unexpected ; " 
and  when  he  adds  that  he  "  made  such 
preparation  as  is  usually  made  for  such 
subjects,"  he  refers  to  each  of  the  briefs 
which  he  prepared  at  the  times  I  have 
mentioned  in  the  text.  These  were  the 
notes  which  he  used  in  speaking,  so  far 
as  he  used  any ;  and  he  afterward  pre 
sented  them  to  Mr.  Ticknor.  What, 
then,  are  the  proofs  that  these  were  the 
only  notes  which  he  made  in  preparing 


364 


LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[On.  XVI. 


dry  discussion  of  a  constitutional  question,  with  perhaps  a  little 
play  of  fancy  concerning  the  allusion  to  Banquo's  ghost  and  the 
march  of  the  South  Carolina  militia  upon  the  custom-house. 
Perhaps  one  of  the  most  efficient  means  which  he  employed  to 
bring  the  position  of  his  opponent  to  the  appreciation  of  common 
minds  was  the  introduction,  among  the  severer  forms  of  logic,  of 
a  lighter  tone  of  illustration,  by  running  out  the  practical  ap 
plication  of  the  South  Carolina  doctrine  into  the  results  and 
the  inconvenient  vulgar  consequences  of  mere  treason.  If  ridi 
cule  be  not  always  the  test  of  truth,  it  certainly  is,  when  logi 
cally  correct  in  its  argument,  and  used  without  personal  dis 
courtesy,  a  very  powerful  auxiliary. 

The  effect  of  this  speech  upon  the  country,  that  immediately 
followed  its  delivery,  it  is  not  easy  for  us  at  the  present  day  to 
measure.  We  are  to  remember  that  this  wjisjhejkst  time  that 
the  two  opposite  views  of  the  nature  of  the  Constitution  had 
come  into  public  discussion  in  Congress,  and  that  the  political 


those  speeches  ?  The  proofs  are :  1. 
That  he  had  no  time  to  make  any  other 
written  preparation  for  either  speech.  2. 
When  he  gave  these  notes  to  Mr.  Tick- 
nor,  he  gave  them  as  all  that  he  had  put 
on  paper  before  speaking.  3.  They  are 
precisely  the  kind  of  notes  which  a 
speaker  of  great  practice  usually  prepares 
when  he  has  to  make  an  important  speech 
on  the  following  day;  and  the  internal 
evidence  shows  that  they  are  the  notes 
from  which  he  spoke. 

To  say  of  Mr.  Webster's  reply  to 
Hayne  that  he  "knew  a  fortnight  be 
forehand  the  points  that  would  be  made, 
the  positions  that  would  be  assumed,  and 
the  parties  that  would  be  assailed,"  con 
tradicts  the  recorded  history  of  the  de 
bate,  and  Mr.  Webster's  own  testimony. 
That  he  knew  previously  the  general 
grounds  on  which  the  nullifiers  claimed 
to  rest  their  theory  of  the  Constitution, 
is  certainly  true.  But  Mr.  Hayne's 
argument  was  very  far  from  being  a 
common-place  repetition  of  what  had 
been  uttered  or  printed  by  others ;  his 
points  could  not  have  been  anticipated, 
nor  could  the  persons  or  parties  whom 
he  was  to  assail  have  been  previously 
known. 

With  regard  to  the  opinion  of  this 
writer,  that  "  all  those  magnificent  pas 
sages  which  live  in  the  memory,"  etc., 
"  were  prepared  beforehand  with  the  ut 


most  care,"  etc.,  I  haye  reason  .to  believe 
that  none  of  them  were  prepared  before 
hand,  but  that  they  were  elaborately  cor 
rected  on  Mr.  Gales's  report,  after  they 
were  spoken.  There  is  no  note  or  sign 
of  the  magnificent  imagery  of  the  pero 
ration  to  the  second  speech  on  the  writ 
ten  brief.  When  Mr.  Webster,  in  utter 
ing  that  peroration,  depicted  "  the  gorge 
ous  ensign  of  the  Republic — still  full 
high  advanced,  its  arms  and  trophies 
streaming  in  their  original  lustre,"  there 
was  floating  in  his  mind  Milton's  sublime 
description  of  the  unfurling  in  the  lower 
regions  of 

"Th'  imperial  ensign,  which,  full  high  ad 
vanced, 

Shone  like  a  meteor  streaming  to  the  wind, 
With  gems  and  golden  lustre  rich  emblazed, 
Seraphic  arms  and  trophies." 

There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  he 
used  this  image  in  speaking,  with  more 
or  less  adoption  of  Milton's  language; 
and  I  have  reason  to  knowL$hat,  after  the 
speech  was  delivered,  a  frltend  asked  him 
to  look  at  Milton's  lines,  and  that  he  did 
so,  and  corrected  the  passage  as  it  now 
stands.  (For  a  very  graphic  description 
of  the  scene,  and  Mr.  Webster's  manner 
on  this  occasion,  see  an  extract  from  Mr. 
March,  in  the  Biographical  Memoir  by 
Mr.  Everett,  in  Works,  i.,  92-97.  Com 
pare  March's  Reminiscences  of  Congress, 
132-148.) 


1830.]  REPLY  TO  HAYNE.  365 

relations  of  several  eminent  men  were  such  as  to  make  this  and 
the  three  following  years  an  era  of  great  peril.  Mr.  Calhoun,  the 
real  author  of  the  doctrine  of  State  nullification — a  man  whom 
Mr.  "Webster  always  regarded  as  the  ablest  of  the  public  men 
whom  he  had  ever  been  called  to  oppose,  and  whose  personal  char 
acter  always  commanded  his  entire  respect — had  been  chosen 
Yice-President  of  the  United  States  at  the  time  when  General 
Jackson  became  President ;  and,  as  Yice-President,  he,  of 
course,  occupied  the  chair  of  the  Senate  during  this  debate. 
He  was  naturally  regarded  by  his  friends  as  the  probable  suc 
cessor  of  General  Jackson ;  and,  in  the  event  of  the  death  of 
the  President,  he  would  be  the  constitutional  incumbent  for  the 
residue  of  the  official  term.  But  the  relations  of  General  Jack 
son  and  Mr.  Calhoun.  were  not  friendly,  notwithstanding  their 
official  positions,  and  the  fact  that  they  had  been  elected  to 
them  by  the  same  general  political  combination.  Mr.  Yan 
Buren  had  become  the  head  of  General  Jackson's  Cabinet,  as 
Secretary  of  State,  and  it  was  well  known  that  he  was  the  per- 
son  whose  aspirations  to  the  presidency  General  Jackson  was 
most  disposed  to  favor.  Mr.  Calhoun,  however,  was  strong  in 
friends,  and,  in  his  own  State,  his  sway  over  the  minds  of  a 
large  majority  of  her  people  was  supreme.  His  opinions,  on 
the  expediency  of  protective  tariffs,  and  on  the  constitutional 
power  of  Congress  to  impose  and  enforce  them,  had  undergone 
a  complete  revolution  ;  and  he  had,  in  the  full  conviction  that 
Congress  was  not  likely  to  abandon  them,  constructed  for  him 
self,  and  for  those  who  followed  him,  the  theory  of  State  nulli 
fication  as  the  last  and  only  remedy  against  their  oppressive 
operation.  General  Hayne,  in  the  debate  of  1830,  although  a 
man  of  undoubted  ability  and  accomplishments,  was  the  mouth 
piece  of  Mr.  Calhoun. 

"When,  therefore,  this  memorable  discussion  took  place,  there 
was,  in  these;  personal  relations,  and  in  the  immediate  subject 
on  which  the  doctrine  of  nullification  was  first  asserted,  cause 
for  great  anxiety  on  the  part  of  friends  of  the  Union  every 
where,  and  this  anxiety  was  heightened  by  the  character  of  the 
constitutional  question.  For  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  there  is 
much  plausibility  in  the  argument  that  makes  the  Constitution 
a  compact  between  sovereign  States,  of  whose  infraction  they 


366  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVI. 

are  to  judge ;  and  although  it  is  an  argument  which  omits  to 
give  due  weight  to  that  part  of  the  Constitution  providing  for 
a  judicial  arbiter  of  its  own,  with  the  express  intention  of  with 
drawing  such  questions  from  the  final  cognizance  of  the  States 
themselves,  and  which  also  deals  imperfectly  with  some  of  the 
other  very  important  facts  respecting  the  origin  of  the  Consti 
tution,  it  was  by  no  means  clear,  beforehand,  how  far  the 
popular  mind  of  this  country  could  be  relied  upon  to  embrace 
and  give  effect  to  its  appropriate  refutation. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  this  speech  of  Mr.  "Web 
ster  should  have  been  more  extensively  read,  within  the  six 
months  following  its  delivery,  than  any  other  speech  that  had 
been  made  in  Congress  since  the  establishment  of  the  Consti 
tution.  Men,  everywhere,  were  aware  that  a  new  and  startling 
doctrine,  respecting  the  Constitution,  had  assailed  its  very  foun 
dations,  and  they  were  eager  to  possess  and  to  understand  the 
answer  to  it ;  knowing  well  that,  if  that  answer  were  not  com 
plete,  their  own  minds,  and  the  minds  of  others,  would  be  left 
in  a  painful  and  perilous  uncertainty.  Yast  numbers  of  Mr. 
Webster's  speech  were  therefore  published  and  circulated  in 
pamphlet  editions,  after  all  the  principal  newspapers  of  the 
country  had  given  it  entire  to  their  readers.  The  popular 
verdict,  throughout  the  Northern  and  Western  and  many  of 
the  Southern  States  was  decisive.  A  great  majority  of  the 
people  of  the  United  States,  of  all  parties,  understood,  appre 
ciated,  and  accepted  the  view  maintained  by  Mr.  Webster  of 
the  nature  of  the  Constitution,  and  the  character  of  the  gov 
ernment  which  it  establishes. 

A  singular  occurrence,  which  took  place  during  this  debate, 
presents  a  striking  proof  of  the  practical  operation  of  certain 
opinions  held  by  the  statesmen  of  South  Carolina  on  the 
powers  of  the  Federal  Constitution.  Perhaps  it  may,  in  part, 
account  for  the  introduction  of  some  of  the  topics  on  which 
Mr.  Webster  deemed  it  necessary  to  reply  to  General  Hayne, 
in  his  first  speech  on  Foote's  Eesolution.  It  has  generally  been 
overlooked  in  the  various  accounts  which  have  been  given  of 
this  great  discussion. 

Among  the  earliest  of  the  railroad  enterprises  projected 
in  this  country,  was  one  in  South  Carolina,  to  extend  from 


1830.]  INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENTS.  367 

Charleston  to  the  western  boundary  of  the  State,  at  a  point 
opposite  to  the  city  of  Augusta,  in  Georgia.  It  was  a  scheme 
in  which  were  embarked  some  citizens  of  South  Carolina,  who 
did  not  share  the  constitutional  opinions  of  their  congressional 
representatives  concerning  the  power  of  Congress  to  promote 
what  were  called  "  internal  improvements,"  and  who  believed 
that  this  enterprise  embraced  relations  which  made  it  a  proper 
object  for  the  exercise  of  that  power.  The  petition  of  the 
corporation  of  the  "  South  Carolina  Canal  and  Railroad,"  ask 
ing  a  Government  subscription  to  its  capital  stock,  was  sent 
to  Mr.  Webster,  to  be  presented  in  the  Senate,  accompanied 
by  the  following  letter  from  the  president  of  the  company, 
which  sufficiently  suggests  the  reasons  for  asking  his  aid,  and 
fully  explains  the  grounds  on  which  the  directors  of  the  corpo 
ration  believed  they  were  entitled  to  the  assistance  of  Congress. 
It  will  be  observed  that  the  letter  is  dated  early  in  January. 
The  petition  was  presented  in  the  Senate,  by  Mr.  Webster,  on 
the  18th,  the  day  before  that  on  which  General  Hayne  made 
his  first  speech  to  which  Mr.  Webster  felt  called  upon  to  reply : 


[FROM  THE  HON.  WILLIAM  AIKEN.] 

NA  CANAL  AND  I 

1  CHARLESTON,  Qth  January,  1830. 


OFFICE  OF  THE  SOUTH  CAROLINA  CANAL  AND  EAILROAD  COMPANT,  ) 


"  The  Hon.  DANIEL  WEBSTER, 

"  United  States  Senate. 

"  SIR  :  The  directors  of  the  South  Carolina  Canal  and  Kailroad  Com 
pany  have  instructed  me  respectfully  to  request  from  you  the  favor  to 
present  their  petition  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  praying  the  Gen 
eral  Government  in  furtherance  of  the  objects  of  their  institution. 

"The  subject  is  fully  developed  in  the  petition  and  documents  accom 
panying  it,  which  will  be  presented  to  you  by  General  Hayne,  of  this  State, 
and  we  trust  every  point  of  difficulty  touching  the  completion  of  this 
work,  and  our  ability  to  effect  that  object  should  the  General  Govern 
ment  aid  the  enterprise  to  the  extent  prayed  for,  will  be  removed  by 
Colonel  Blanding,  of  this  State,  at  present  on  a  visit  to  the  city  of  Wash 
ington. 

"  In  soliciting  your  aid  in  behalf  of  our  institution,  it  is  due  to  the  gen 
tlemen  who  are  Senators  from  our  State,  to  inform  you  that  objections 
predicated  on  constitutional  grounds  will  induce  them  to  oppose  the  object 
of  our  petition,  and  some  reluctance  to  present  it,  therefore,  must  be  ex 
perienced,  on  which  we  are  not  inclined  to  trespass. 

"  The  quality  of  the  enterprise  as  it  relates  to  the  General  Government  is 
obviously  calculated  to  acquire  for  it  the  most  indulgent  consideration.  The 


368  LIFE   OF  DAXIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVI. 

purpose  is  not  less  to  give  a  particular  direction  to  the  produce  of  this  and 
a  sister  State,  than  to  procure  for  commercial  operations  certainty  and  con 
fidence.  The  deepening  of  our  bar,  or  improving  the  facilities  of  our  port, 
would  not  more  certainly  advance  the  interests  of  the  merchant  than  in  com 
municating  assurance  of  a  prompt  execution  of  their  orders.  The  present 
season,  with  almost  all  the  past,  evidence  the  uncertainty  and  losses  incident 
to  an  exclusive  reliance  on  our  rivers  for  the  transportation  of  produce. 
For,  until  within  a  very  few  days,  this  harbor  has  been  crowded  with  ships, 
and  our  country  warehouses  with  cotton — the  planter  and  the  merchant 
incurring  heavy  charges,  and  deprecating  the  disappointments  and  delays 
to  which  they  are  subjected.  In  a  military  point  of  view,  the  contem 
plated  road  will  subserve  highly-essential  objects.  The  United  States 
arsenal  at  Augusta  would  be  rendered  more  generally  and  promptly  useful, 
and  confer  protection,  when  under  present  circumstances  the  emergency 
would  pass,  before  the  relief  required  from  it  could  be  obtained.  Still 
more  important  would  be  the  facility  of  transporting  troops  from  the  dense 
population  of  the  interior  to  the  Atlantic  border  of  our  State.  These 
advantages  are  not  unworthy  of  the  patronage  of  the  General  Government, 
whether  they  refer  to  foreign  invasion  or  domestic  insurrection.  As  a 
post-road,  its  benefits  will  be  most  extensively  conferred,  nor  will  it  admit 
of  doubt  that,  in  a  much  shorter  period  than  works  of  such  magnitude 
have  hitherto  been  accomplished,  it  will,  under  the  fostering  care  of  the 
General  Government,  be  made  to  constitute  a  link  of  union  with  the  rising 
States  of  the  "West,  attaching  them  more  strongly,  through  the  powerful 
influences  of  interest,  to  their  Atlantic  brethren.  These,  however,  are  sub 
jects  on  which  we  will  not  dilate. 

"  Should  you,  sir,  approve  our  purposes,  believing  that  the  General 
Government  does  legitimately  possess  the  power  to  aid  works  (of  great 
public  utility)  in  the  way  intimated,  you  will  confer  an  obligation  which 
we  shall  most  sensibly  feel,  by  bestowing  on  it  the  acknowledged  influences 
of  your  attention  and  talents.  We  would  gratefully  add  yours  to  the 
name  of  the  patrons  of  our  infant  institution,  and  the  record  of  the  service 
will  be  found  in  the  general  advantage  resulting  to  our  city  and  State. 

"  With  sentiments  of  high  consideration, 
"  I  remain,  sir, 

"  Your  most  obedient  servant, 

"  WM.  AIKEN, 
"  President  South  Carolina  Canal  and  Railroad  Company." 

The  following  report  of  Mr.  "Webster's  remarks,  on  present 
ing  this  petition,  is  taken  from  the  "  Register  of  Debates :  " 

"Mr.  Webster  said  he  rose  to  present  the  petition  of  'the  South  Caro 
lina  Canal  and  Railroad  Company,'  praying  Congress  to  authorize  a  sub 
scription,  on  the  part  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  of  two 
thousand  five  hundred  shares  of  the  capital  stock  of  that  company.  The 


1830.]  INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENTS.  369 

railroad,  contemplated  by  the  petitioners,  was  to  extend  from  Charleston 
to  Hamburg,  in  the  vicinity  of  Augusta ;  and  the  petition  sets  forth  the 
practicability  of  the  intended  work.  The  enterprise  was  certainly  one  of 
a  very  laudable  nature,  such  as  had,  in  other  instances,  met  encouragement 
and  assistance  from  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  and  it  was  with 
pleasure  that  he  presented  it  to  the  consideration  of  the  Senate.  It  had 
been  confided  to  his  hands  from  no  disrespect,  certainly,  toward  the  hon 
orable  gentlemen  who  were  Senators  from  South  Carolina,  but  solely  be 
cause  the  petitioners  were  unwilling  to  trespass  on  the  reluctance  which 
the  honorable  Senators  from  South  Carolina  naturally  felt,  or  might  be 
supposed  to  feel,  to  presenting  petitions  for  aid  from  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  in  cases  in  which  their  known  opinions,  as  to  the  con 
stitutional  powers  of  Congress,  would  oblige  them  to  oppose  the  prayer  of 
the  petitioners.  For  his  own  part  (Mr.  Webster  said),  it  was  well  known 
that,  during  the  whole  time  in  which  he  had  had  any  connection  with 
Congress,  he  had  been  uniformly  in  favor  of  what  was  called  internal  im 
provement,  when  applied  to  objects  of  sufficient  magnitude  and  importance 
to  be  properly  called  national.  And,  while  he  admitted  the  necessity  of 
great  caution  and  wisdom  in  the  exercise  of  the  power,  he  must  still  say 
that  every  day  convinced  him  more  and  more  of  the  necessity  of  such 
exercise  in  suitable  cases.  He  would  take  occasion  to  add,  that  he  was  a 
thorough  convert  to  the  practicability  and  efficacy  of  railroads.  He  be 
lieved  that  the  great  results  which  the  power  of  steam  had  accomplished, 
in  regard  to  transportation  by  water,  were  not  superior  to  those  which  it 
would  yet  accomplish  in  regard  to  transportation  by  land.  The  only 
doubt  was  as  to  the  amount  of  cost ;  and  that  was  a  point  which  expe 
rience  would  shortly  solve,  he  hoped  satisfactorily.  He  would  only  add, 
that  while  he  felt  pleasure  in  presenting  this  petition,  he  looked  forward 
with  equal  pleasure  to  the  time,  he  hoped  not  distant,  when  it  would  be 
his  duty,  in  conjunction  with  his  colleagues,  to  ask  a  subscription  by  Con 
gress  to  the  Massachusetts  railroad,  a  contemplated  work,  which,  if  ex 
ecuted,  would  facilitate  intercourse  between  several  States,  and  be  felt,  in 
its  beneficial  effects,  all  the  way  from  the  Bay  of  Massachusetts  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Ohio.  When  the  proper  time  should  come,  he  doubted  not 
the  Senate,  and  the  other  branch  of  the  Legislature  also,  would  give  to 
the  enterprise  such  aid  and  assistance  as  it  should  be  entitled  to  by  the 
consideration  of  its  magnitude,  and  its  obvious  public  utility  and  im 
portance." 

Mr.  "Webster  then  presented  the  petition,  and  it  was  referred 
to  the  Committee  on  Eoads  and  Canals. 

I  now  add  some  further  selections  from  Mr.  "Webster's  cor 
respondence  during  a  part  of  this  session — a  correspondence 
that  lies  before  me  in  such  masses,  that  it  is  difficult  to  adjust 

my  space  to  what  may  be  the  demands  of  my  readers. 
25 


370  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XYl. 

[FROM  MB.  CLAY.] 

"  ASHLAND,  6th  January,  1830. 

"Mr  DEAR  SIB:  I  offer  you  hearty  congratulations  on  a  late  event, 
which  I  hope,  and  have  no  doubt,  will  conduce  to  your  happiness.  The 
most  favorable  accounts  of  Mrs.  Webster  reach  me  from  all  quarters.  You 
have  avoided  an  error  too  frequent,  in  second  marriages,  of  a  great  dis 
proportion  in  the  ages  of  the  parties.  Rumor  says  that  the  late  event  is 
the  prelude  to  another,  that  of  your  removal  to  New  York.1 

"  I  am  about  proceeding  to  New  Orleans,  where  I  purpose  passing  a 
portion  of  the  winter  with  my  daughter  and  son-in-law.  The  effect  of  a 
southern  climate  will  be  agreeable,  and  I  trust  may  prove  beneficial  to  my 
health,  which,  though  improved,  still  requires  care.  I  shall  be  thus  placed 
farther  than  ever  from  the  scenes  now  passing  at  Washington.  My  corre 
spondents  there  keep  me  pretty  well  informed  of  the  actual  state  of  things ; 
but  as  yet  no  important  movements  appear  to  have  been  made  in  either 
branch  of  Congress.  I  am  curious  to  know  the  issue  of  the  nominations, 
which,  if  not  already,  must  be  shortly  sent  in.  One  of  the  strangest  among 
them,  from  this  quarter,  is  that  of .  I  had  hoped  that  the  appoint 
ment  of  minister  to  Mexico  would  have  been  conferred  on ,  a  most  ex 
cellent  fellow,  and  one  of  good  capacity.  But  these  are  not  the  times  in 
which  such  men  are  employed. 

"  Cordially  your  friend, 

"H.  CLAY. 

"  The  Honorable  D.  Webster." 

[FBOM  THE  HON.  J.  H.  PLEASANTS,  OP  VIBGESTIA.] 

"  KICHMOND,  4.th  March,  1830. 

"  DEAB  SIB  :  Permit  me  to  congratulate  you  on  your  speech,  on  the 
great  sensation  it  has  produced  in  this  quarter,  so  nattering  to  your  feel 
ings,  and  its  effects  so  honorable  to  the  consistency  of  your  public  conduct, 
and  your  ability  to  defend  it.  The  knowledge  that  you  have  completely 
vindicated  yourself,  floored  your  antagonist,  and  gained  a  complete  victory 
so  far  as  argument  goes,  is  nearly  universal.  .  .  . 

"  I  am,  sir,  with  great  respect, 

"  JNO.  H.  PLEASANTS." 

[FBOM  GOVEBNOB  LINCOLN.] 

"  WORCESTER,  March  17, 1830. 

"  MY  DEAB  SIB  :  I  cannot  consent  to  forward  the  accompanying  official 
papers  without  improving  the  same  opportunity  to  express  to  you  my 
grateful  sense  of  your  kind  recollection  and  attention,  in  transmitting  vari- 

1  For  this  rumor  I  believe  there  was  no  sufficient  foundation. 


1830.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  371 

ous  documents  during  the  present  session  of  Congress,  and  especially  copies 
of  your  speeches  on  Mr.  Foote's  resolution.  As  a  New-England  man,  I 
thank  you  for  the  able  defence  of  this  much-abused  part  of  the  country ; 
as  a  citizen  of  Massachusetts,  I  thank  you  for  the  vindication  of  her  char 
acter  for  patriotism,  for  attachment  to  the  Federal  Union,  for  services,  sac 
rifices,  and  undeviating  and  devoted  regard  for  the  interest  of  a  common 
cause  and  country — and  as  a  Republican — ay,  and  as  an  old-fashioned  Jef 
ferson  Republican,  too  !  I  feel  the  weight  of  obligation  to  you  for  assert 
ing  the  consistency  of  principle  and  the  integrity  of  purpose  with  which 
we  oppose  despotism  in  every  shape,  and  however  exercised — whether  from 
a  foreign  source  or  under  the  abuse  of  domestic  authority.  If  any  thing 
can  rouse  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  a  sense  of  their  danger,  and  a 
timely  protection  of  themselves  and  their  free  institutions,  it  must  be  the 
appeals  to  their  intelligence  and  virtue  which  have  been  addressed  to  them 
from  the  Senate-chamber.  I  pray  God  they  may  be  effectual.  They  have 
awakened  attention,  and  there  must  be  safety  in  the  result.  .  .  . 

"  With  great  respect  and  esteem,  most  truly, 

"  Your  obedient  and  obliged  servant, 

"LEVI  LINCOLN. 

"  To  the  Hon.  Daniel  Webster." 


[FROM  MB.  TICKNOR.] 

"April*,  1830. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  The  enclosed  letter  will  sufficiently  explain  itself.  It 
is  only  necessary  to  add  that  Mr.  Allston  wrote  it  without  any  request  or 
suggestion  from  any  one ;  that  the  opinion  he  expresses  in  it  of  Greenough's 
talent  is  one  entertained  by  all  the  artists  in  this  quarter ;  and  that  neither 
Allston  nor  myself  has  any  interest  in  Greenough  except  on  account  of  his 
genius.  Verplanck,  I  understand,  has  been  written  to  on  the  same  subject, 
and  probably  Everett,  Gorham,  and  some  other  of  our  friends,  would  be 
influenced  by  Allston's  opinion  in  such  a  matter  —that  is,  if  it  ever  comes 
to  the  question  whether  anybody  shall  be  employed  to  make  a  statue 
of  Washington.  But  enough  of  this.  Allston's  letter  contains  the 
whole. 

"  Judge  Story  is  at  home  and  well,  with  two  words  to  say  to  his  friends, 
and  no  more.  From  him,  more  distinctly  than  we  knew  it  before,  we  have 
heard  of  your  great  labors  this  winter,  and  the  burdensome  occupation  of 
your  time.  But  I  trust  Congress  will  rise  early  in  May,  that  you  may  be 
relieved  and  come  home  to  us  before  you  are  worn  down  by  the  hot 
weather. 

"I  had  a  letter  from  you  some  time  since,  and  a  copy  of  your  truly 
great  speech,  for  both  of  which  I  desire  to  thank  you.  If  your  health 
should  freely  permit,  I  hope  you  may,  on  some  suitable  occasion,  make 
another  speech  this  session.  I  hope  it  for  two  reasons :  in  the  first  place, 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  nation  is  in  a  condition  to  listen  to  the  discussion 


372  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

of  such  questions  as  it  is  your  peculiar  province  to  discuss,  there  being 
now  no  great  party  questions  or  interests  to  excite  the  passions  of  men 
and  absorb  their  attention;  and,  secondly,  because  I  am  sure  they  are 
disposed  to  listen  respectfully  and  carefully  to  whatever  you  may  say. 
It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  that  it  is  an  occasion  to  speak  for  the 
public  good. 

"But  I  hear  you  have  more  letters  every  day  than  you  can  read,  and  so 
I  will  not  add  to  the  oppression  of  the  number. 

"  Yours  very  faithfully, 

"GEO.  T—    — . 

"  R.  Gilinore,  of  Baltimore,  knows  Greenough,  and  would,  I  think,  in 
terest  himself  in  his  behalf.  Greenough's  plan  was  the  one  adopted  for 
the  Bunker  Hill  monument." l 


[TO  MB.   TICKNOR.] 

"  WASHING-TOST,  April  8, 1830. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR:  If  Congress  should  proceed  so  far,  in  my  time,  as  to 
vote  a  statue  to  Washington,  I  will  make  an  effort  for  Greenough.  But  at 
present  the  business  has  proceeded  no  further  than  a  report.  I  have  no 
belief  any  thing  will  be  done.  After  this  faint  ebullition  of  national  grati 
tude  and  national  pride,  the  whole  subject  will  probably  sleep  another  ten 
years.  "  See  nations  slowly  wise,"  etc. 

"I  have  read  Tom  Moore's  first  volume  of  Byron's  life.  Whatever 
human  imagination  shall  hereafter  picture  of  a  human  being,  I  shall  be 
lieve  it  all  within  the  bounds  of  credibility.  Byron's  case  shows  that  fact 
sometimes  runs  by  all  fancy,  as  a  steamboat  passes  a  scow  at  anchor.  I 
have  tried  hard  to  find  something  in  him  to  like  besides  his  genius  and  his 
wit,  but  there  was  no  other  likeable  quality  about  him.  He  was  an  incar 
nation  of  demonism.  He  is  the  only  man,  in  English  history,  for  a  hundred 
years,  who  has  boasted  of  infidelity,  and  of  every  practical  vice,  not  included 
in  what  may  be  termed  (what  his  biographer  does  term)  meanness.  Lord 
Bolingbroke,  in  his  most  extravagant  youthful  sallies,  and  the  wicked  Lord 
Littleton,  were  saints  to  him.  All  Moore  can  say  is,  each  of  his  vices  had 
some  virtue  or  some  prudence  near  it,  which,  in  some  sort,  checked  it. 
Well,  if  that  were  not  so  in  all,  who  would  escape  hanging  ?  The  biog 
rapher,  indeed,  says  his  worst  conduct  must  not  be  judged  of  by  the  ordi 
nary  standard !  And  that  is  true,  if  a  favorable  decision  is  looked  for. 
Many  excellent  reasons  are  given  for  his  being  a  bad  husband,  the  sum  of 
which  is  that  he  was  a  very  bad  man.  I  confess,  I  was  rejoiced  then,  I  am 
rejoiced  now,  that  he  was  driven  out  of  England  by  public  scorn ;  for  his 
vices  were  not  in  his  passions,  but  in  his  principles.  He  denied  all  religion 

1  This  letter,  and  Mr.  Webster's  reply    the  late  Horatio  Greenough,  and  placed 
to  it,  which  follows,  relate  to  the  statue    in  front  of  the  Capitol, 
of  Washington,  afterward  executed  by 


1830.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  373 

and  all  virtue  from  the  house-top.  Dr.  Johnson  says  there  is  merit  in  main 
taining  good  principles,  though  the  preacher  is  seduced  into  violation  of 
them.  This  is  true.  Good  theory  is  something.  But  a  theory  of  living, 
and  of  dying,  too,  made  up  of  the  elements  of  hatred  to  religion,  contempt 
of  morals,  and  defiance  of  the  opinion  of  all  the  decent  part  of  the  public, 
when,  before,  has  a  man  of  letters  avowed  it  ?  If  Milton  were  alive,  to 
recast  certain  prominent  characters  in  his  great  epic,  he  could  embellish 
them  with  new  traits,  without  violating  probability. 

"  Walter  Scott's  letter,  toward  the  end  of  the  book,  is  much  too  chari 
table. 

"I  find  in  one  of  Lord  Byron's  letters  a  suggestion  that  a  part  or  the 
whole  of  '  Robinson  Crusoe'  was  written,  while  in  prison,  by  the  first  Lord 
Oxford  (Robert  Harley),  and  by  him  given  to  Defoe.  Is  there  any  such 
suggestion  anywhere  else  ?  I  do  not  believe  it.  Defoe's  (his  true  name 
was  Foe)  other  works  show  he  could  write  'Robinson  Crusoe.'  Harley 
has  left  no  proof  of  his  capacity  for  such  a  work.  "While  on  the  subject 
of  books,  whither  I  have  strayed,  I  know  not  how,  allow  me  to  say  there 
is  one  I  want  to  see.  It  is  Johnson's  '  Shakespeare.'  I  covet  a  sight  of 
that  book,  just  as  S.  J.  left  it.  His  first  edition  was  about  1765  or  '66. 
Did  he  publish  a  second  ?  You  are  not  only  a  man  for  books  in  general, 
but  for  Shakespeare  in  particular,  and  can  tell  me.  If  you  have  the 
book,  I  shall  get  a  reading  of  it ;  if  you  have  it  not,  I  wish  you  would 
order  it  on  my  account,  the  next  time  you  write  Mr.  Rich.  I  suppose  the 
first  edition  was  folio,  but  know  not. 

"  We  have  the  April  number  of  the  North  American  here,  and  I  have 
run  over  its  articles.  I  think  them  good,  generally  speaking,  but  am  not 
satisfied  with  that  on  Mr.  Jefferson's  correspondence.  Early  diplomatic 
history  is  interesting. 

"  I  shall  make  no  more  speeches.  What  I  have  done,  even,  was  not 
with  malice  prepense.  Make  our  best  regards  to  Mrs.  Ticknor,  and  believe 
me  always  truly  yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 


[FROM  MR.  STORER,  OF  OHIO.] 

"  CINCINNATI,  OHIO,  April  11, 1830. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Our  friend  Judge  Burnet  will  hand  you  the  retainer 
for  our  city,  and  I  will,  at  an  early  day,  transmit  you  a  full  statement  of 
the  case. 

"  I  have  just  been  relieved  from  a  few  weeks'  session  of  our  court,  and 
feel  too  much  fatigued  to  prepare  so  full  a  history  of  the  matters  involved 
in  our  suit  as  I  wish. 

"  It  has  yielded  me  the  most  unmingled  pleasure  to  read,  in  your  late 
address  in  the  Senate,  the  defence  of  our  fathers,  and  the  principles  of  our 
fathers.  There  cannot  be  a  New-Englander  whose  soul  has  not  kindled  up 
within  him,  whose  energies  have  not  been  awakened,  if  he  has  perused 


374  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER,  [On.  XVI. 

your  triumphant  vindication  of  his  country  and  his  countrymen.  If  there 
is  a  recreant  spirit,  let  him  go  down  to  infamy  with  the  'scavenger' 
whom  you  have  '  damned  to  everlasting  fame.'  Thank  Heaven,  we  hold 
but  few  of  these  degenerate  men  in  our  political  communion,  and  we  should 
be  an  exception  to  all  governments  if  we  did  not ;  yet  it  gives  us  in  the 
West  great  cause  for  exultation  that  no  son  of  New  England,  who  has  left 
the  land  of  his  nativity  and  cast  his  lot  with  the  people  of  any  other  State, 
has  ever  publicly  vilified  his  country.  There  has  been  something  so  sacred 
connected  with  early  associations  that  it  has  protected  his  birthplace  from 
moral  and  political  profanation.  If  the  blow  has  been  struck,  the  parri 
cide  is  not  an  emigrant. 

"  The  intimation  in  your  letter,  that  you  had  strong  hopes  of  visiting 
us  during  the  summer  or  autumn,  has  been  communicated  to  many  of  your 
friends.  I  say  friends,  for  we  all  claim  you,  and  we  anticipate  the  pleasure 
of  welcoming  you  to  a  'free  and  independent  State,'  whose  prosperity 
and  happiness  have  been  mainly  secured  by  the  intelligence  and  wisdom  of 
Nathan  Dane,  of  Beverly. 

"  Shall  I  ask  the  favor  of  you  to  transmit  me  Mr.  Clayton's  speech,  if 
it  is  published  in  pamphlet.  The  '  rari  nantes  in  gurgite  vasto"1  of  the 
opposition  I  can  read  in  the  newspapers. 

"I  am,  very  respectfully  and  truly,  yours, 

"BELLAMY  STORER." 


[FROM  ME.  CLAY.] 

"  ASHLAITO,  mh  April,  1830. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  received  to-day  your  very  acceptable  favor  of  the 
18th  instant.  The  copies  of  the  speech  to  which  it  refers  have  not  been 
received,  but  probably  will  come  safe  to  hand.  If  they  do  not,  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  the  seed  may  not  fall  on  barren  ground.  I  congratulate  you 
on  the  very  great  addition  which  you  have  made  during  the  present  ses 
sion  to  your  previous  high  reputation.  Your  speeches,  and  particularly 
that  in  reply  to  Mr.  Hayne,  are  the  theme  of  praise  from  every  tongue ; 
and  I  have  shared  in  the  delight  which  all  have  felt.  I  trust  that  they  will 
do  much  good.  It  is  a  great  consolation  to  the  honest  patriot  that,  what 
ever  may  be  his  own  fate,  his  principles  will  stand,  and  his  country, 
sooner  or  later,  derive  the  benefit  of  their  illustration  and  establishment. 
To  that  consolation  you  will  be  eminently  entitled. 

"  I  have  attentively  observed  the  course  of  measures  and  events  in  and 
out  of  Congress.  If  all  shall  not  have  been,  much  will  be,  done  to  bring 
the  public  mind  back  to  soberness  and  truth  ;  and  I  yet  see  no  cause  of 
despair.  It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  the  Senate  has  not  better  ful 
filled  its  high  duties  incident  to  the  power  of  appointment.  It  ought  to 
have  rejected  all  nominations  made  to  supply  persons  dismissed  for  politi 
cal  cause ;  all  to  replace  those  whom  they  approved  at  the  last  session ; 


1830.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  375 

most  of  the  printers,  and  most  of  the  members  of  Congress.  If  it  has  left 
undone  some  things  which  it  ought  to  have  done,  we  ought  to  be  thankful 
for  some  of  its  rejections.  Those  of  Lee  and  Hill  are  especially  entitled  to 
the  public  gratitude ;  and  I  hope  it  will  place  us  under  a  similar  obliga 
tion  for  the  rejection  of  Kendall  and  Noah. 

The  importance  of  rejecting  certain  nominations  does  not  consist  in  the 
exclusion  merely  of  unworthy  men  from  office,  although  that  is  far  from 
being  a  minor  object ;  but  it  shows  that  Jackson  is  not  infallible  nor  invul 
nerable.  The  character  of  an  eminent  public  man  resembles  a  fortification. 
If  every  attack  is  repelled,  if  no  breach  on  any  point  be  made,  he  becomes 
impregnable.  But  if  you  once  make  a  breach,  no  matter  how  small,  the 
work  may  be  carried.  Considering  how  many  of  his  recommendations  in 
his  opening  message  have  failed,  or  are  likely  to  fail,  if  to  their  defeat 
could  be  added  that  of  some  of  his  more  obnoxious  nominations,  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  effect  on  the  public  would  be  very  great.  Indeed,  whatever 
may  be  the  result  of  his  nominations  not  disposed  of  at  the  date  of  your 
letter,  the  effect  of  his  miscarriages  has  been  considerable.  He  still  shows 
game,  appears  stout  and  strong ;  but  I  think  his  strength  is  that  of  the 
buck,  mortally  wounded,  who  springs  boldly  forward  while  he  is  inter 
nally  bleeding  to  death. 

uln  this  view  of  the  matter,  I  must  respectfully  doubt  that  policy 
which  would  surrender  to  his  party  their  undisturbed  course  on  any  sub 
ject  respecting  which  they  were  believed  to  be  wrong.  Success  too  often 
sanctions ;  and  their  success,  in  reference  to  the  defeat  of  the  power  of  in 
ternal  improvement,  for  example,  would,  I  fear,  tend  to  produce  acquies 
cence  in  the  surrender  of  the  power.  If,  indeed,  they  can  defeat,  at  pres 
ent,  the  power,  after  all  proper  exertions  by  our  friends,  good  might  result 
from  that.  We  should  have  done  our  duty ;  and  the  great  body  of  the 
nation  would  then  see  that  it  was  not  our  fault  that  they  did  not  get  the 
benefit  of  the  exercise  of  the  power ;  and  that,  if  they  wished  for  that,  they 
must  support  us. 

"  My  observation  induces  me  to  believe  that  there  is  a  great  reaction  in 
respect  to  the  present  administration  ;  and  that  the  exercise  of  the  power 
of  patronage  is  condemned  by  a  vast  number  of  the  Jackson  party  as  well 
as  by  our  own  friends.  It  is  true,  as  you  justly  remark,  that  there  is  less 
public  disapprobation  expressed  of  the  dismissions  than  could  have  been 
expected.  But,  I  believe,  nevertheless,  that  it  exists  very  extensively.  I 
speak  confidently  on  this  subject  as  it  regards  the  valley  of  the  Mis 
sissippi. 

"  I  have  noticed  the  movements  at  Harrisburg  and  Albany.  The 
former,  if  we  are  rightly  informed,  was  an  abortion ;  and  the  latter  may,  I 

suppose,  be  considered  as  essentially  Mr.  V.  B 's.  That  Jackson  will  be 

again  a  candidate  is  highly  probable.  If  he  can  unite  in  his  support  Vir 
ginia,  Pennsylvania,  and  New  York,  opposition  to  his  election  will  be 
vain.  If  either  of  those  States  can  be  detached  from  him,  he  may  be 
beaten.  What  is  the  probability  of  their  union  ?  You  are  better  judges  at 


376  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

"Washington  than  I  can  be.  My  information  from  the  western  part  of 
Pennsylvania  is  very  flattering ;  and  something  may  come  out  of  the  late 
celebration  of  Mr.  Jefferson's  birthday. 

"  In  considering  the  expediency  of  using  my  name  in  opposition  to 
General  Jackson,  I  desire  that  every  interest  and  feeling  which  I  may  be 
supposed  to  cherish  in  respect  to  myself  should  be  entirely  discarded.  The 
question  ought  to  be  examined  and  decided  exclusively  in  reference  to  our 
cause,  and,  which  is  the  same  thing,  the  great  interests  of  our  country.  No 
personal  or  private  considerations  ought  to  have  the  smallest  influence  in 
its  determination.  If  I  could  make  an  honorable  retreat  from  public  life, 
forever,  it  would  cost  me  much  less  effort  to  do  so  than  will  be  believed. 

"After  saying  so  much,  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  I  shall 
acquiesce — most  cheerfully  acquiesce — in  whatever  line  of  policy  my 
friends  may  mark  out  at  Washington. 

"  There  are  three  courses  :  1.  Assuming  that  Jackson  will  be  a  candi 
date,  to  abandon  all  opposition  to  his  reelection  ;  2.  To  hoist  our  banner, 
and  proclaim,  prior  to  the  close  of  the  present  session,  our  candidate ;  3. 
To  wait  until  the  next  session  of  Congress. 

"  I  shall  not  discuss  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  each.  My 
friends  at  Washington  are  more  competent,  from  their  superior  informa 
tion,  and  more  impartial  than  I  am,  to  compare  and  weigh  them. 

"  Even  if  the  second  of  the  suggested  courses  should  be  deemed  ex 
pedient,  the  question  would  not  be  free  from  difficulty  as  to  the  time  when 
and  the  place  where  our  candidate  should  be  announced.  .  .  . 

"  I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  from  you  again  before  the  session  closes. 
"  I  am,  ever  truly  your  friend, 

"  H.  CLAY. 
"  D.  Webster,  Esq." 


[TO  MB.    DENISON.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  May  10, 1830. 

"  I  begin,  my  dear  sir,  by  confessing  my  faults.  It  is  long  since  I 
wrote  you,  and  I  have  no  apology  but  the  evil  habit  of  omitting  to-day 
that  which  may  be  done  to-morrow.  Let  me  assure  you  I  never  forget 
you,  nor  lose  sight  of  you ;  from  the  moment  when  you  last  wrote  me, 
when  you  were  just  going,  but  did  not  go,  on  a  little  'family  party'  to 
India,  to  the  present,  whether  in  office  or  out,  I  have  kept  a  watchful  eye 
upon  you.  My  friend  Mr.  Hush  spoke  of  having  seen  you  in  his  late  visit 
to  England ;  and  I  am  indebted  to  you  for  a  copy  of  your  brother's  very 
sensible  and  manly  dissertation  on  confederacies,  received  last  autumn. 

"  For  the  four  years  (or  five,  I  believe,  it  may  be)  since  I  saw  you,  my 
own  fortunes  have  been  no  otherwise  remarkable  than  as  I  have  experi 
enced  domestic  changes.  I  am  now  the  husband  of  another  wife. 

Some  three  years  ago  our  good  people  thought  I  had  become  old 
and  grave  enough  fora  Senator;  wherefore  they  transferred  me  to  that 


1830.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  377 

House  of  Congress.     Mr.  Gorham  became  my  successor  as  representative 
from  Boston. 

"  Our  political  affairs  just  now  are  destitute  of  any  particular  interest. 
We  have  our  party  quarrels — our  ins  and  our  outs,  our  likes  and  dislikes — 
and  we  change  men  and  dynasties ;  but  the  Government  still  keeps  on, 
and  holds  us  thus  far  safely  together.  Our  foreign  relations,  like  those  of 
our  neighbors,  are  very  quiet.  We  should  be  glad  you  would  let  us  into 
your  colonial  trade  ;  but,  if  you  do  not,  we  shall  not  quarrel  with  you  on 
that  account.  Expensive  living,  heretofore,  the  great  reduction  of  prices 
now,  and  the  vast  overstock  of  supply  of  every  kind  beyond  the  demand, 
produce,  what  we  call  here,  hard  times;  and  the  country  is  at  present 
divided  in  relation  both  to  the  cause  and  the  remedy.  A  portion  of  the 
South  lays  all  the  evil  to  the  tariff;  the  Middle  States  deny  this.  The 
former  insist  on  the  repeal  of  all  protecting  duties ;  the  latter  warmly 
resist  it ;  and  the  New-England  States,  though  not  originally  in  favor  of 
the  protecting  policy,  having  now  become  deeply  interested  in  manufac 
turing  establishments,  are  not  inclined  to  change  back  again.  All  New 
England,  or  all  with  few  exceptions,  voted  against  the  tariff  of  1824.  It 
is  now  nearly  unanimous  against  repeal  or  reduction.  But  I  must  send 
you  a  speech  of  mine  to  explain  this ;  and  I  will  relieve  you  from  further 
detail  here,  leaving  you  to  be  edified  by  the  speech  aforesaid.  You  will 
see  strong  symptoms  of  oppugnation  in  the  South,  especially  in  South 
Carolina.  There  is,  however,  I  trust,  no  great  danger  of  violent  irregu 
larities.  The  tariff  will  not  at  present,  certainly,  be  either  repealed  or 
reduced. 

"  Your  friend  Judge  Story  has  been  made  a  professor  of  law,  and  has 
gone  to  live  at  Cambridge.  He  and  his  brothers  of  the  bench  left  us  a 
month  ago.  The  Chief  Justice,  now  almost  as  old  as  Lord  Mansfield  at 
his  retirement,  enjoys  excellent  health,  and  seems  to  experience  no  decay 
of  mind  or  faculties.  We  shall  break  up  here  in  all  this  month,  and, 
for  one,  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  be  off.  Summer  and  sea-shore  are  a 
coincidence  of  time  and  place  very  favorable  to  my  health  and  enjoy 
ment. 

"  I  shall  pack  up  our  blue-book,  a  speech  or  two  of  the  session— such 
as  I  think  will  best  bear  reading  across  the  Atlantic — add  one  of  my  own, 
and  ask  the  favor  of  Mr.  Vaughan  to  put  them  together  with  this  letter 
in  the  way  of  reaching  your  hand.  When  you  see  Mr.  Stanley,  Mr.  Wort- 
ley,  Mr.  Labouchere,  and  Colonel  Dawson,  pray  assure  them  that  we  hold 
them  in  fresh  remembrance  on  this  side  of  the  globe.  Let  not  my  past 
omissions  forfeit  me  your  future  kindness.  Pray  make  my  most  respectful 
compliments  to  Lady  Charlotte  ;  and  believe  me  ever,  my  dear  sir,  with 
"  Sincere  and  true  regard, 

"  Cordially  yours, 

"  DAKL.  WEBSTER. 
"J.  E.  Denison,  Esq., 

"  2,  Portman  Place,  London." 


378  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVL 

In  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1830,  Mr.  Webster  was 
engaged,  with  the  Attorney-General  of  Massachusetts,  in  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  criminal  prosecutions  on  record.  The 
following  is  a  summary  of  the  facts : 

"  On  the  morning  of  the  7th  of  April  of  that  year,  the  town  of  Salem 
was  thrown  into  a  state  of  intense  excitement  by  the  intelligence  that  Mr. 
Joseph  "White,  one  of  the  wealthiest  and  most  respectable  citizens  of  that 
town,  a  retired  merchant,  eighty-two  years  of  age,  had  been  found  mur 
dered  in  his  own  bed.  This  gentleman  was  not  known  to  have  an  enemy ; 
a  large  amount  of  money  and  other  valuable  property  in  the  house  was 
left  undisturbed,  and  popular  conjecture  was  baffled  in  its  attempt  to 
assign  a  motive  for  this  atrocious  crime.  Meetings  of  the  citizens  of 
Salem  were  called ;  a  committee  of  vigilance  was  organized,  consisting  of 
twenty-seven  of  the  most  reputable  citizens  of  the  town,  and  every  effort 
was  made  to  ferret  out  the  perpetrators  of  this  enormity.  For  a  long  time 
the  most  persistent  investigations  of  the  ministers  of  justice  were  unavail 
ing  ;  but  at  length  a  rumor  came  to  the  ears  of  the  vigilance  committee  of 
Salem  that  a  prisoner,  by  the  name  of  Hatch,  in  the  jail  at  New  Bedford, 
seventy  miles  away,  had  thrown  out  some  intimations  that  he  could  let  light 
into  this  strange  mystery.  The  Attorney-General  immediately  had  the  man 
brought  up  before  the  grand  jury,  and  on  his  testimony  an  indictment  was 
found  against  Richard  Crowninshield,  of  Danvers,  for  the  murder ;  and 
several  associates  of  his,  including  his  brother  George,  were  indicted  on 
the  testimony  of  other  witnesses.  Richard  Crowninshield  was  a  dark  and 
desperate  character,  a  man  who  shunned  the  public  ways,  but  was  well 
known  as  a  cool  and  subtle  villain. 

"About  two  weeks  after  the  arrest  of  this  desperado  and  his  com 
panions,  Captain  Joseph  J;  Knapp,  a  shipmaster  and  merchant  of  good 
character,  received  a  strange  note  from  a  man  in  Belfast,  Maine,  signing 
himself  Charles  Grant,  Jr.,  which  threw  out  vague  intimations  and  threats 
of  exposure  if  a  demand  for  money  which  the  note  conveyed  was  not  com 
plied  with.  The  writer  of  this  mysterious  letter  said  :  '  I  merely  tell  you 
that  I  am  acquainted  with  your  brother  Franklin,  and  also  the  business  he 
was  transacting  for  you  on  the  2d  of  April  last ;  and  that  I  think  that  you 
was  very  extravagant  in  giving  one  thousand  dollars  to  the  person  that 
would  execute  the  business  for  you.'  This  letter  was  a  complete  riddle  to 
Captain  Knapp,  and  he  showed  it  to  his  son,  N.  Phippen  Knapp,  a  young 
lawyer  of  Salem,  who  was  equally  at  a  loss  to  understand  its  meaning. 
Captain  Knapp,  with  this  son,  then  set  out  to  consult  his  other  sons,  John 
Francis  Knapp  and  Joseph  Jenkins  Knapp,  Jr.,  who  resided  in  Wenham. 
The  wife  of  Joseph  J.  Knapp,  Jr.,  was  the  daughter  of  a  niece  of  the  late  Mr. 
White,  who  had  acted  as  his  housekeeper  prior  to  the  murder.  When  the 
letter  from  the  mysterious  Grant  was  shown  to  this  son  Joseph,  he  said  it 
'  contained  a  devilish  lot  of  trash,'  and  told  his  father  to  hand  it  over  to 


1830.]  THE  KNAPP  TRIALS.  379 

the  committee  of  vigilance.  This  blundering  disposition  of  the  letter  on  the 
part  of  young  Joseph  Knapp  was  the  first  step  in  a  train  of  evidence  which 
brought  himself  and  his  brother  Frank  to  the  gallows.  No  sooner  had  the 
committee  of  vigilance  received  Grant's  letter,  than  they  sent  a  trusty  mes 
senger  to  Maine  to  find  out  the  writer.  This  proved  to  be  one  Palmer, 
who  had  served  a  term  in  the  State  prison,  and  had  associated  with  the 
Crowninshields  during  some  part  of  the  preceding  winter,  having  been 
concealed  in  their  father's  house  at  Danvers.  On  the  3d  of  April,  he 
said,  he  saw  Frank  Knapp  and  a  young  man  by  the  name  of  Allen  ride  up 
to  the  house,  and  afterward  go  away  in  company  with  the  Crowninshields ; 
and  when  they  returned,  he  heard  George  Crowninshield  tell  Richard  that 
Frank  Knapp  wished  them  to  undertake  to  kill  Mr.  White,  and  that  J.  J. 
Knapp,  Jr.,  would  pay  them  one  thousand  dollars  for  the  job.  Palmer 
said  he  had  been  asked  to  be  concerned  in  the  matter,  but  had  declined. 

"  There  had  already  been  a  strange  occurrence  connected  with  these 
Knapps  since  the  murder,  but  the  excitement  then  prevailing  in  the  com 
munity  had  not  allowed  public  attention  to  rest  on  it.  A  report  had  been 
circulated  that,  on  the  night  of  the  27th  of  April,  Francis  and  Joseph 
Knapp  had  been  attacked  by  highway  robbers,  on  their  way  from  Salem 
to  Wenham,  and  had  escaped  with  their  lives  only  after  a  desperate 
struggle.  The  account  of  this  bold  attempt  at  highway  robbery,  in  a 
hitherto  undisturbed  community,  was  published  in  the  newspapers  of 
Salem,  as  reported  by  the  Knapps,  with  the  comment  that  '  these  gentle 
men  are  well  known  in  this  town,  and  their  respectability  and  veracity  are 
not  questioned  by  any  of  our  citizens.'  It  afterward  appeared,  however, 
that  this  story  was  a  pure  fabrication,  intended  to  divert  attention  from 
the  real  perpetrators  of  the  murder  at  Salem ;  but,  with  the  usual  impru 
dence  of  guilt,  the  criminals  only  furnished  additional  ground  for  suspicion 
by  this  improbable  and  gratuitous  narrative. 

"  On  the  testimony  of  Palmer,  a  warrant  was  issued  for  the  arrest  of 
John  Francis  Knapp  and  Joseph  J.  Knapp,  Jr.,  and  they  were  held  in  cus 
tody  to  await  a  thorough  investigation  of  the  evidence  in  their  case.  On 
the  third  day  of  his  imprisonment,  Joseph  Knapp  made  a  full  confession. 
He  had  found  that  Captain  White,  by  his  will,  intended  to  leave  to  his 
(Knapp's)  wife  but  fifteen  thousand  dollars,  while  he  supposed  that  if 
Captain  White  died  intestate  she  would  inherit  one-half  of  his  property  as 
the  sole  representative  of  his  sister,  although  a  brother  of  Mr. White  had  left 
four  sons,  all  of  whom  were  living.  Under  this  impression,  he  determined 
to  destroy  the  will,  and  to  compass  the  death  of  the  old  man.  Frank 
agreed  to  hire  an  assassin,  and  Joseph  was  to  pay  one  thousand  dollars  for 
the  bloody  service.  The  agent  employed  was  Richard  Crowninshield,  who 
entered  the  house  on  the  night  of  the  6th  of  April  by  a  window  which  had 
been  prepared  by  the  care  of  Joseph  Knapp  for  the  purpose,  and  made  his 
way  to  the  chamber  of  Mr.  White,  where  he  dealt  him  a  deadly  blow  on 
the  temple  with  a  bludgeon,  and  then  gave  him  no  less  than  thirteen  stabs 
with  a  dagger.  So  coolly  did  he  accomplish  his  devilish  purpose,  that, 


380  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

as  he  afterward  declared,  he  paused  to  feel  the  old  man's  pulse  to  see  if 
life  was  extinct.  While  this  horrid  business  was  going  on  in  the  house, 
Frank  Knapp  was  waiting  the  issue  ;  but  Joseph  had  that  day  got  posses 
sion  of  the  will,  and  gone  home  to  Wenham,  leaving  the  perpetration  of 
the  crime  in  the  hands  of  his  hirelings.1 

"  When  Richard  Crowninshield  learned  that  the  Knapps  were  in  cus 
tody,  and  that  Joseph  had  made  a  confession,  he  committed  suicide  by 
hanging  himself  to  the  bars  of  his  cell  with  a  handkerchief.  A  special 
term  of  the  Supreme  Court  was  held  at  Salem  on  the  20th  of  July,  and 
continued  in  session  till  the  20th  of  August,  with  a  brief  intermission.2 
Indictments  for  murder  were  found  against  John  Francis  Knapp  as  prin 
cipal,  and  Joseph  J.  Knapp,  Jr.,  and  George  Crowninshield,  as  accessories. 
The  Attorney-General  obtained  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Webster  in  conducting 
the  prosecution,  and,  at  the  trial  of  Francis  Knapp,  in  August,  leave  of  the 
court  was  asked  and  obtained  that  he  might  assist  in  the  management  of 
the  case,  and  close  the  argument  on  the  part  of  the  government.  The 
prisoners  were  defended  by  Mr.  Franklin  Dexter  and  Mr.  W.  H.  Gardiner, 
advocates  of  great  learning  and  ability,  who  omitted  no  exertions  which 
could  help  the  case  of  their  clients.  Francis  Knapp  was  convicted  of  the 
murder,  as  principal,  and  sentenced  to  death.  Joseph  Jenkins  Knapp, 
charged  with  being  an  accessory  before  the  fact,  was  tried  at  the  Novem 
ber  term  of  the  court,  and  was  convicted  and  sentenced  to  share  the  fate 
of  his  brother.  On  this  trial  also  Mr.  Webster  assisted  the  law  officers  of 
the  State.  George  Crowninshield  proved  an  alibi,  and  was  acquitted." 

Mr.  Webster's  appearance  for  the  prosecution,  on  these 
trials,  gave  rise  to  some  complaints  on  the  part  of  the  pris 
oner's  counsel,  as  it  was  supposed  that  he  was  retained  for 
the  purpose  by  Mr.  Stephen  White,  who  was  a  nephew  and 
residuary  legatee  of  the  gentleman  murdered.  The  facts  are 
these :  The  Attorney-General  and  the  Solicitor-General  were 
both  persons  quite  advanced  in  years,  and  they  desired  Mr. 
Wejbster's  services  on  the  trials.  On  the  trial  of  John  Francis 
Knapp  as  principal,  leave  was  obtained  from  the  court  that  Mr. 
Webster  should  aid  the  law  officers  of  the  State,  and  no  objec- 

1  A  peculiar  circumstance  about  this  vict,  was  a  remarkable  instance  of  the 

strange  murder  was  the  series  of  blunders  want  of  sagacity  of  criminals ;  and,  finally, 

of  which  Joseph  Knapp  was  the  victim,  the  will  which  he  had  seen,  and  which  he 

In  the  first  place,  his  mother-in-law  would  carried  away  on  the  day  of  the  murder, 

not  be  heir  to  more  than  one-fifth  of  was  not  the  last  will  of  Captain  White. 
Captain  White's  property  at  best ;    the  2  Capital  trials  in  Massachusetts  al- 

vuse   of   the  highway    robbery    was   a  ways  take  place  before,  at  least,  three 

stupid  piece  of  business  ;  the  giving  up  judges  of  the  "  Supreme  Judicial  Court," 

of  Grant's  letter  to  the  committee  of  the  highest  court  of  the  State ;  so  that 

vigilance,  when  he  might  easily  have  de-  points  of  law  are  ruled  upon  the  trial  by 

stroyed  it  and  hushed  up  the  Maine  con-  more  than  one  judge. 


1830.]  THE  KNAPP  TRIALS.  381 

tion  was  interposed  by  the  prisoner's  counsel.  But,  in  address 
ing  the  jury,  Mr.  Dexter  complained  that  Mr.  Webster  had 
been  brought  there  to  "  hurry  the  jury  against  the  law  and 
beyond  the  evidence."  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that  on 
this  trial  any  suggestion  was  publicly  made  that  Mr.  Web 
ster  had  received,  or  was  to  receive,  a  fee  from  any  private 
quarter.  In  opening  his  argument  to  the  jury,  Mr.  Webster 
said  that  "  although  he  could  well  have  wished  to  shun  this 
occasion,  he  had  not  felt  at  liberty  to  withhold  his  professional 
assistance,  when  it  was  supposed  that  he  might  be  in  some 
degree  useful  in  investigating  and  discovering  the  truth  respect 
ing  this  most  extraordinary  murder,"  and  that  u  in  that  court 
nothing  could  be  carried  against  the  law,  and  an  intelligent  and 
just  jury  could  not  by  any  power  be  hurried  beyond  the  evi 
dence."  ; 

On  the  trial  of  Joseph  Knapp,  as  accessory,  the  prisoner's 
counsel  (the  same  gentlemen  who  had  defended  Francis  Knapp) 
objected  to  Mr.  Webster's  appearance  for  the  government. 
They  referred  to  a  statute,  which  placed  public  prosecutions 
under  the  direction  and  control  of  the  law  officers  of  the  State, 
and  which  prohibited  them  from  receiving  any  fee  or  reward 
from  or  in  behalf  of  any  prosecutor.  They  stated  that  they 
"  had  understood  that  Mr.  Webster  was  to  receive  a  compen 
sation  for  his  services  from  a  private  prosecutor,  and  they 
questioned  the  right  of  a  private  individual  to  retain  counsel  to 
aid  the  law  officers  of  the  government  in  effecting  a  conviction 
for  a  crime  punishable  with  death."  Mr.  Webster  rose  and 
said  that  "  he  appeared  solely  at  the  request  of  the  Attorney- 
General,  and  without  any  pecuniary  inducement."  These  are 
the  statements  of  what  occurred,  as  they  are  found  in  the  offi 
cial  report.2  On  the  following  day,  the  court  delivered  its 
opinion  on  the  application,  through  Mr.  Justice  Putnam,  as 
follows : 

"  In  the  present  case,  Mr.  Webster  avows  that  he  is  induced  to  aid  the 
Attorney-General  merely  at  his  request,  and  without  any  other  considera 
tion,  so  that  this  case  presents  the  question  whether  a  counsellor  may,  at 
the  request  of  the  Attorney-General,  be  admitted  to  aid  him  in  the  prose 
cution,  without  any  pecuniary  consideration  being  paid  to  him,  or  any 

1  Works,  vi.,  51,  52.  2  10  Pickering's  Reports,  477. 


382  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

other  consideration  which  may  be  supposed  to  influence  him,  excepting  a 
disinterested  regard  for  the  public  good.  And  we  all  think  that,  under 
these  circumstances,  the  application  should  be  granted. 

"  It  is  to  be  recollected  that,  at  the  trial  of  John  Francis  Knapp,  Mr. 
Webster  was,  at  the  request  of  the  law  officers,  appointed  to  aid  them,  and 
that  there  was  no  objection  then  made  by  the  prisoner's  counsel.  And 
although  that  appointment  strictly  was  for  the  then  pending  trial,  yet,  if 
the  other  trials  had  followed  immediately,  the  counsel  for  the  government 
would  have  had  reason  to  suppose  that  they  were  to  receive  his  assistance 
in  those  trials,  unless  good  objections  should  have  been  made.  It  is  said 
by  the  law  officers  that  the  preparations  for  this  trial  have  been  made 
under  similar  circumstances,  and  no  objection  was  made  to  this  measure 
until  the  jury  were  empanelled." 

On  the  same  day  on  which  this  decision  was  pronounced, 
Mr.  "Webster  wrote  to  Mr.  Justice  Story  in  these  words : 

"  SALEM,  Wednesday,  one  o'clock.1 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  J.  J.  Knapp's  trial  commenced  yesterday.  The  A.  M. 
yesterday  was  occupied  in  empanelling  a  jury ;  the  p.  M.  mainly  in  debat 
ing  whether  the  Attorney-General  had  a  right  to  bring  in  other  counsel ; 
on  this  question  their  honors  deliberated,  and  this  morning  agreed  to  let 
me  in,  I  having  stated  to  them  that  I  appeared  at  the  request  of  the 
Attorney-General,  and  had  not  received,  and  should  not  receive,  any  fee  in 
this  case,  which,  of  course,  was  and  is  true.  This  A.  M.  has  been  employed 
in  discussing  the  admissibility  of  the  confessions,  and  the  court  holds  the 
point  under  advisement.  I  expect  they  will  be  ruled  out.' 


»  2 


It  is  quite  evident  that  the  court  understood  Mr.  Webster 
as  denying  that  he  had  received  or  expected  any  fee  in  the  case 
then  on  trial.  The  application  before  the  court  involved  no 
inquiry  into  the  relations  in  which  Mr.  Webster  had  stood 
in  the  case  of  Francis  Knapp,  who  had  been  tried,  convicted, 
and  sentenced  three  months  previously ;  and  Mr.  Webster's 
own  report  of  his  language  on  the  trial  of  Joseph  Knapp  is, 
that  he  had  not  received,  and  should  not  receive,  any  fee  in 
that  case.  Judge  Story  was  connected  by  marriage  with  Mr. 
Stephen  White,  the  supposed  private  prosecutor,  and  doubtless 
knew  under  what  circumstances  Mr.  Webster  originally  came 

1   In  the  first  volume  of  Mr.  Web-  context  shows  that  the  letter  was  writ- 

ster's  Correspondence,  published  in  1857,  ten    on     the     second    day    of    Joseph 

by  Mr.  Fletcher  Webster,  the   date   of  Knapp's    trial,   and    this   was    Novem- 

this  letter  is  given  as   of  August   11,  ber  10th. 
1830.     This  is  clearly  an  error.     The          2  Correspondence,  i.,  506. 


1830.]  THE   KNAPP  TRIALS.  383 

into  the  case  of  Francis  Knapp,  the  principal,  and  that  in  the 
case  of  Joseph  Knapp,  the  accessory,  Mr.  Webster's  statement 
was  strictly  true.  Moreover,  in  the  case  of  Francis  Knapp, 
Mr.  Webster  assisted  the  Attorney-General  at  his  request,  and 
without  any  previous  fee,  or  promise  of  a  fee,  from  any  quarter ; 
although  I  believe  it  to  be  true  that,  after  the  trial  and  con 
viction  of  Francis  Knapp,  Mr.  Stephen  "White  offered  Mr.  Web 
ster,  and  the  latter  received,  pecuniary  compensation  for  his 
services  on  the  trial  of  Francis. 

The  circumstances  which  led  to  the  request  for  Mr.  Web 
ster's  services  on  these  trials  were  entirely  unprecedented.  Jo 
seph  Knapp  was  the  person  who  instigated  the  murder.  He 
had  two  objects  to  accomplish :  one  to  destroy  a  will  which  it 
was  known  Captain  White  had  executed,  and  which  gave  the 
greater  part  of  his  property  to  his  nephew  Stephen ;  the  other, 
to  kill  Captain  White  before  the  destruction  of  his  will  could 
be  known  to  him.  In  the  event  of  Captain  White's  dying  in 
testate,  Joseph  Knapp  supposed,  erroneously,  that  his  mother- 
in-law  would  inherit  a  moiety  of  the  estate.  Through  the 
agency  of  his  brother  Frank,  he  hired  Richard  Crowninshield 
to  kill  the  testator,  and  himself  abstracted  a  will  (but  not  the 
last  will)  from  a  strong-box  in  the  chamber  of  the  deceased,  and 
prepared  the  house  for  the  entrance  of  the  assassin.  The  three 
were,  therefore,  concerned  in  a  joint  conspiracy  to  compass  the 
death  of  Captain  White,  and,  after  the  confession  of  Joseph, 
the  details  of  this  conspiracy,  and  the  part  played  in  it  by  each 
of  them,  became  known  to  the  Attorney-General,  who  obtained 
the  confession  by  promising  immunity  to  Joseph,  on  condition 
that,  when  brought  into  court  as  a  witness  for  the  State,  he 
should  testify  fully  and  truly.  But,  after  the  suicide  of  Crown 
inshield,  it  became  -necessary  to  convict  Frank  Knapp  as  a  prin 
cipal  in  the  murder;  for,  as  the  law  of  Massachusetts  then 
stood,  no  one  could  be  convicted  as  an  accessory  until  there  had 
been  a  conviction  of  some  one  as  principal.  But,  when  it  was 
found  that  Frank  was  to  be  put  on  trial  as  a  principal,  Joseph 
retracted  his  engagement  with  the  Attorney-General,  and  re 
fused  to  testify.  This  was  done  upon  the  calculation  that,  as 
Crowninshield  alone  had  entered  the  house,  the  prosecution 
would  not  be  able  to  prove  that  Frank's  participation  amounted 


384  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVI. 

to  that  of  a  principal  in  the  murder.  He  was  no  nearer  to  the 
house,  at  any  time,  than  a  distance  of  three  or  four  hundred 
feet ;  and,  although  he  was  in  the  street  at  the  rear  of  the  house, 
at  some  time  during  the  night,  and  at  a  position  from  which  he 
could  see  when  all  the  lights  were  extinguished,  it  was  very 
doubtful  if  the  prosecution  could  show,  by  independent  testi 
mony,  whether  he  was  there  before  Crowninshield  entered,  or 
while  the  latter  was  within  the  house,  or  when  he  came  out. 
In  order  to  convict  Frank  as  a  principal,  it  was  necessary  for 
the  prosecution  to  convince  the  jury  that  he  was  present  in  the 
street  at  the  time  of  the  murder,  aiding  and  abetting  the  person 
who  dealt  the  fatal  blow.  To  produce  this  conviction,  Mr. 
Webster  put  forth  all  his  strength,  and  it  was  all  needed.  No 
one  of  less  ability  in  the  handling  of  evidence  could  have  suc 
ceeded  in  satisfying  the  jury  that  Frank  Knapp  was  present  at 
the  murder  for  the  purpose  of  rendering  aid,  if  necessary.  Mr. 
Webster's  argument  rested  mainly  on  two  positions :  first,  that 
there  was  a  conspiracy  to  murder  the  deceased,  and  that  Frank 
Knapp  was  one  of  the  conspirators ;  second,  that,  as  a  conspira 
tor,  he  was  present  in  the  street,  by  agreement,  to  countenance 
and  aid  the  perpetrator.  This  would  make  him  a  principal.  The 
force  of  Mr.  Webster's  argument  convinced  the  jury  that  Frank 
was,  in  this  sense,  present  at  the  murder.1  But  the  fact  was  other 
wise  ;  and  if  Joseph  Knapp  had  not  refused  to  testify,  and  had 
told  the  whole  truth,  neither  of  them  would  have  suffered  for 
the  murder.  It  would  then  have  appeared  that,  at  the  time 
Crowninshield  started  to  commit  the  murder,  he  told  Frank  to 
go  home  and  go  to  bed ;  that  Frank  did  so  ;  but  that  he  after 
ward  rose,  from  anxiety  to  know  what  had  been  done,  went 
toward  Captain  White's  house,  and  met  Crowninshield,  after 
the  murder  had  been  committed.  If  Frank  had  not  been  con 
victed  as  principal,  Joseph  could  not  have  been  convicted  as 
accessory. 

On  the  trial  of  Joseph  Knapp,  as  accessory  before  the  fact, 
Mr.  Webster's  task  was  of  an  entirely  different  nature.  Having 
refused  to  testify  on  the  trial  of  his  brother,  Joseph  had  for 
feited  his  right  to  the  immunity  promised  to  him  by  the  Attor 
ney-General,  and  was,  therefore,  rightfully  put  upon  trial  him- 

1  Mr.  Webster's  address  to  the  jury  is  contained  in  his  Works,  vi.,  41-105. 


1830.]  THE  KNAPP  TRIALS.  385 

self.  But  lie  could  not  be  convicted  without  the  use  of  the  con 
fession  which  he  had  made  under  the  promise  of  favor.  Mr. 
Webster  had  to  satisfy  the  court  that  the  confession  was  admis 
sible,  although  made  under  these  circumstances.  He  argued 
that,  as  against  himself,  the  prisoner's  confession  was  admissi 
ble,  because  made  freely  and  voluntarily ;  for,  having  obtained 
the  Attorney-General's  promise  of  immunity  before  he  made 
the  confession,  he  had  no  motive  falsely  to  accuse  himself,  al 
though  he  might  have  a  motive  falsely  to  accuse  his  accomplices. 
The  court  permitted  the  confession  to  go  to  the  jury.  Mr.  "Web 
ster  then  had  to  convince  the  jury  that  the  confession  was  credi 
ble.  The  prisoner  was  convicted. 

Nothing  was  more  remarkable  in  Mr.  Webster  than  the 
manner  in  which  he  kept  distinct,  in  his  own  person,  the  char 
acters  of  the  statesman  and  the  lawyer.  A  stranger,  hearing 
him  in  the  forum,  would  not  have  imagined  him  to  be  any  thing 
but  a  lawyer ;  one  who  should  have  heard  him  in  the  Senate 
would  rarely  have  suspected  that  he  was  one  of  the  very  first 
lawyers  of  his  time  and  country.  It  was  always  observed  of 
him,  by  his  contemporaries  of  the  bar,  that  he  brought  into  the 
forum  neither  the  habits  of  mind,  the  modes  of  reasoning,  nor 
the  kinds  of  eloquence,  which  belong  to  the  discussions  of 
statesmen ;  nor  did  he  carry  into  the  Senate  the  peculiarities 
of  reasoning  and  analysis  and  proof  which  are  alone  effective 
in  judicial  tribunals.  In  the  latter,  his  great  renown  as  a 
public  man  no  doubt  helped  to  fasten  the  attention  of  judges 
and  jurymen,  and  sometimes  aided  the  ascendancy  which  his 
intellect  enabled  him  to  obtain  over  the  intellects  of  those  he 
addressed.  But  Mr.  Webster  was  generally  encountered  at  the 
bar  by  men  who  were  able  to  overcome  any  influence  of  this 
kind,  by  rendering  it  necessary  for  him  to  exert  all  his  powers 
in  the  mode  which  the  forensic  habit  demands,  and  which  is 
peculiar  to  the  discussions  in  courts  of  justice.  His  ability  to 
do  so  was  never  affected  by  the  habits  acquired  in  legislative 
bodies.  On  the  trials  of  which  I  have  here  given  an  account, 
he  produced  convictions  of  the  prisoners  because  of  this  power 
to  discharge  the  functions  of  a  lawyer,  as  if  he  were  never  any 
thing  but  a  lawyer. 

26 


386  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVII. 


CHAPTEE   XVII. 

1830-1831. 


DINNER   TO   ME.  WEBSTER   IN   NEW   YORK GIVES  UP  A  JOURNEY 

TO   THE   WEST NOMINATION    OF    MR.    CLAY   AS   THE   CANDIDATE 

OF  THE  NATIONAL   REPUBLICANS — RELIEF   OF   INSOLVENT  DEBT 
ORS   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES — MISCELLANEOUS  CORRESPONDENCE. 

~T"TT"E  are  now  arrived  at  the  period  in  Mr.  Webster's  life 
V  V  when  he  began  to  be  considered,  by  a  part  of  the  people 
of  the  North  and  the  West,  and  by  many  in  the  South  who 
were  politically  opposed  to  the  reelection  of  General  Jackson, 
the  most  suitable  person  to  be  brought  forward  as  a  candidate 
for  the  presidency.  Aside  from  the  public  questions  which  were 
about  to  separate  the  people  of  the  United  States  into  two  par 
ties,  many  of  the  best  minds  in  the  country  had  come  to  place 
their  hopes  for  the  success  and  perpetuity  of  its  institutions 
upon  the  power  and  the  willingness  of  the  nation  to  call  to  the 
chief  magistracy  a  statesman  whose  extraordinary  civil  services, 
whose  intellect,  whose  broad  national  politics,  and  whose  mod 
eration  and  elevation  of  character,  pointed  him  out  as  the  most 
fit  person  in  the  Union  to  be  intrusted  with  the  executive 
office.  It  is  quite  unnecessary  for  me  to  insist  that  this  was 
not  an  undue  partiality.  "We  have  to  deal  with  facts ;  and  it  is 
one  of  the  facts  which  constitute  Mr.  Webster's  justification  for 
allowing  himself  to  be  drawn  into  that  long  candidacy,  in  re 
spect  to  which  he  was  destined  to  be  always  unsuccessful,  that 


1831.]  POPULARITY.  387 

some  of  the  best  and  wisest  men  of  his  time — men  who  had  the 
least  that  was  selfish  and  the  least  that  was  local  in  their  polit 
ical  wishes  and  conduct — originally  awakened  this  desire  in 
his  breast.  It  will  not  be  questioned,  by  even  the  most  phil 
osophic  or  the  most  severe  judgment,  that  the  ambition  was  a 
worthy  one.  To  preside  over  the  government  of  a  great  country, 
by  the  suffrages  of  a  free  people,  and  to  attain  that  position 
without  mean  compliances,  and  through  the  public  confidence 
and  respect,  might  well  be  admitted  by  any  man  to  be  among 
the  objects  for  which  he  lived.  ISTor  were  there  wanting  to  Mr. 
Webster,  from  the  first,  large  elements  and  striking  proofs  of 
that  popularity  for  which  mere  politicians  will  look,  in  the 
selection  of  a  leader  under  whose  political  banner  they  may 
seek  to  array  themselves.  "Wherever  he  went,  the  popular 
interest  in  him  was  sure  to  manifest  itself;  not  only  because  of 
his  intellectual  celebrity,  but  because  he  was  everywhere  re 
garded  as  a  man  who  was  serving  the  country  from  profound 
convictions  respecting  its  true  policy,  and  with  a  wise  and  far- 
seeing  devotion  to  the  Union  and  the  Constitution.  His  opin 
ions,  sentiments,  and  character,  were  as  well  known  in  the  re 
motest  West,  or  in  the  farthest  South,  as  they  were  in  ~New 
England.  Every  man  in  the  country,  who  read  any  thing  of 
public  interest  in  the  current  political  affairs  of  the  nation,  had 
read  his  most  important  Congressional  speeches.  Every  such 
man  knew  how  he  had  voted  on  questions  that  concerned  the 
general  interest,  and  could  tell  almost  with  certainty  where  he 
could  be  found  on  any  question  that  was  likely  to  arise.  From 
quarters  very  remote  from  the  region  which  he  represented, 
and  from  a  great  variety  of  associations,  whose  members  could 
scarcely  hope  that  he  would  ever  visit  their  locality,  or  evince 
a  personal  interest  in  their  affairs,  and  who  could  have  had  no 
special  political  motive,  there  came  to  him  expressions  of  a 
desire  for  the  honor  of  enrolling  him  among  their  nominal  patrons 
or  members.  If  such  evidences  of  popularity  mean  any  thing 
—and,  undoubtedly,  they  mean  a  great  deal,  both  in  the  calcula 
tions  of  mere  political  managers  and  in  the  judgments  of  those 
who  look  for  solid  proofs  of  the  estimation  in  which  a  states 
man  is  held  by  his  contemporaries — Mr.  Webster  undoubtedly 
possessed  them  in  an  abundance  that  would  make  them  impor- 


388  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVII. 

tant  to  any  body.  They  now  lie  before  me  in  forms  so  numer 
ous  and  so  various — the  spontaneous  and  untainted  expressions 
of  popular  respect — that  the  details  would  inconveniently  en 
cumber  my  pages  if  they  were  to  be  set  forth.1 

General  Jackson's  administration  of  the  Government  com 
menced  and  was  continued  under  circumstances  that  produced  in 
him  two  opposite  tendencies.  He  was  elected  to  the  presidency 
through  the  agency  of  that  class  of  public  men  who  were  most 
disposed  to  a  strict  construction  of  the  powers  of  the  Federal 
Constitution ;  and  it  so  happened  that  many  public  questions 
arose  in  the  first  term  of  his  official  service,  which  involved 
the  assertion  or  the  denial  of  specific  powers  of  the  utmost  im 
portance.  At  the  same  time,  he  was  called  to  encounter  a 
doctrine  which  threatened  the  entire  overthrow  of  the  Consti 
tution;  and  the  arguments  by  which  this  doctrine  was  sup 
ported  were,  to  a  considerable  extent,  the  same  with  those 
which  lead  to  a  denial  of  the  particular  powers  that  came 
into  prominent  consideration  during  this  period.  General 
Jackson  finally  saw  that  it  was  his  duty  to  defend  the  Con 
stitution  from  the  heresy  of  State  "  nullification  ;  "  and,  when 
the  crisis  came,  he  executed  that  duty  with  all  the  firm 
ness  that  belonged  to  his  character.  But  he  did  not  see 

1  Among  these  indications  of  popular  from  many  different  States,  both  in  and 
strength — to  use  the  cant  of  politics — I  out  of  New  England.  Such  applications, 
know  of  none  that  can  be  more  signifi-  too,  came  from  numerous  popular  socie- 
cant,  because  there  can  be  none  more  ties  in  no  way  connected  with  the  col- 
genuine  and  unalloyed,  than  the  numer-  legiate  institutions,  and  in  whose  objects 
ous  requests  which  came  to  Mr.  Webster  Mr.  Webster  could  scarcely  be  expected 
from  associations  that  were  not  political  to  take  an  active  part.  Whether  it  was 
in  their  character,  to  permit  the  enroll-  the  great  Bible  association,  whose  head- 
ment  of  his  name  among  their  honorary  quarters  were  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
members,  or  to  address  them  upon  the  or  a  society  of  the  angling-rod,  who  wet 
subjects  which  formed  the  objects  of  their  their  lines  in  the  streams  of  the  Ohio, 
organization.  Of  these,  I  should  select  and  from  all  kinds  of  associations  that 
those  coming  from  the  colleges  scattered  might  be  classed  in  dignity  and  impor- 
through  our  country,  as  affording  a  very  tance  between  these  two  extremes,  the 
striking  evidence  that  a  public  man,  who  solicitations  and  invitations  were  con- 
elicited  such  proofs  of  regard  from  the  stantly  accumulating.  If  it  is  true  that, 
young  who  were  coming  forward  into  in  many  such  cases,  the  chief  object  was 
the  ranks  of  educated  life,  or  from  the  to  draw  public  attention  by  a  great  name, 
older  guides  of  public  opinion,  had  laid  let  it  be  remembered  that  the  recognized 
a  very  broad  foundation  for  what  is  power  of  that  name  to  move  public  at- 
commonly  called  "  popularity."  I  have  tention  is  a  very  weighty  proof  of  what 
counted  a  very  great  number  of  such  might  have  been  done  by  it  in  political 
communications,  at  this  period,  coming  action,  if  the  right  steps  had  not  been 
from  the  most  eminent  as  well  as  the  thwarted  by  untoward  causes  or  by  the 
least  known  of  such  institutions,  and  notorious  doctrine  of  "  availability." 


1831.]  RELATIONS  WITH  THE  PRESIDENCY.  389 

with  equal  clearness  that  the  rules  of  constitutional  interpre 
tation  are  closely  connected  with  the  political  doctrine  that 
maintains  the  supremacy  of  the  Constitution  as  a  fundamental 
law ;  or  that  the  Constitution  itself  provides  for  an  authorized 
judicial  interpreter,  whose  decisions  respecting  the  extent  of 
its  powers  ought  to  be  his  guide ;  or  that  a  uniformity  of  inter 
pretation  and  action,  from  the  time  of  the  origin  of  the  Consti 
tution  to  any  given  period,  ought  to  be  regarded,  under  a  Gov 
ernment  like  ours,  as  the  best  evidence  alike  of  the  national 
will  and  of  the  just  construction  of  such  an  instrument.  In  all 
these  respects,  he  and  his  supporters  belonged  to  one  political 
school,  and  his  opponents  to  another.  Moreover,  there  grew  up 
in  his  time,  partly  as  the  effect  of  his  own  imperious  temper,  to 
which  the  food  of  adulation  was  abundantly  administered,  and 
partly  from  the  loose  ideas  of  the  Presidential  office  that  then 
prevailed  among  his  followers,  very  enlarged  views  of  executive 
discretion.  A  man  of  his  temperament,  whose  purposes  were 
patriotic,  and  whose  intentions  always  were  to  promote  the 
glory  and  welfare  of  his  country,  but  who  had  not  been  much 
accustomed  to  consider  the  boundaries  of  departmental  power, 
was  very  likely  to  embrace  the  idea  of  a  sovereignty  of  the 
people,  acting  through  the  President  in  the  control  of  all  the 
operations  of  Government.  General  Jackson  did  embrace  it. 
He  had  been  elected  by  an  immense  popular  majority,  and  he 
came  to  regard  himself  as  the  direct  and  immediate  constitu 
tional  representative  of  the  people,  forgetting  that,  under  a  fixed 
constitution,  which  distributes  political  functions  among  distinct 
departments,  and  grants  specific  powers  to  each,  the  present 
popular  will  on  any  particular  subject  has  no  just  relation  to 
the  authority  of  any  one  of  those  departments,  as  it  can  have  no 
just  influence  in  determining  what  are  the  constitutional  powers 
of  the  whole  Government. 

These  well-known  facts  and  truths  are  alluded  to  here,  for 
the  purpose  of  showing  why  Mr.  Webster  could  not  become  a 
general  political  supporter  of  President  Jackson,  or  of  any  one 
of  those  who  might  be  made  the  succeeding  candidate  of  the 
same  party.  But  why  was  it,  posterity  will  ask,  that  this  very 
eminent  statesman  was  never  presented  to  the  suffrages  of  his 
countrymen,  for  the  highest  office  in  their  Government,  by  the 


390  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTEE.  [On.  XVII. 

political  party  who  shared  his  opinions,  and  with  whom  he 
acted  ?  The  civil  history  of  this  country,  for  the  two  and  twenty 
years  commencing  in  1830  and  ending  in  1852,  must  furnish 
the  answer  to  this  question.  In  that  period  Mr.  "Webster  acted 
a  great  and  a  very  conspicuous  part.  Whether  it  in  truth  de 
tracts  any  thing  from  his  just  fame  that  he  never  became  the 
candidate  of  his  party  for  the  office  of  President  of  the  United 
States,  will  depend  on  the  judgment  that  may  be  formed  re 
specting  his  own  relation  to  the  causes  which  prevented  his 
selection.  If  it  is  true  that  he  was  right  in  the  public  conduct 
which  lost  him  the  support  of  those  on  whom  he  had  claims  of 
the  highest  nature ;  if  his  well-earned  popularity  waned  through 
the  influence  of  that  which  was  in  him  a  merit  and  not  a  fault ; 
if  he  served  his  whole  country  with  soundness  of  judgment  and 
singleness  of  purpose,  at  cost  to  himself;  if  events  have  shown 
that  in  matters  of  moment  he  made  no  mistakes,  sacrificed  no 
principles,  was  true  to  his  own  character,  and  would  have 
averted  great  evils  from  his  country  if  his  advice  had  been  fol 
lowed — no  one  can  regret,  for  him,  that  an  ambition  which  he 
unquestionably  possessed  was  never  gratified. 

It  is  important  to  a  correct  view  of  Mr.  Webster's  whole 
conduct  on  the  subject  of  the  presidency,  that  he  was  from  the 
first  always  willing  to  admit  the  claims  of  Mr.  Clay  while  there 
was  any  prospect  that  the  selection  of  Mr.  Clay  as  a  candidate 
would  be  wise.  In  the  winter  of  1829,  after  the  first  election 
of  General  Jackson,  as  the  reader  has  seen,  he  wrote  to  his 
brother  that,  if  ISTew  England  could  be  kept  firm  and  steady, 
she  could  make  Mr.  Clay  President,  if  she  should  choose  to  do 
so.1  In  the  spring  of  1830,  after  General  Jackson  had  been  in 
office  a  year,  he  wrote  from  Washington  to  Mr.  Pleasants,  of 
Virginia,  in  reference  to  the  course  of  the  opposition,  in  these 
words : 

"  As  to  future  operations,  the  general  idea  here  seems  to  be  this :  to 
bring  forward  no  candidate  this  year,  though,  doubtless,  the  general  im 
pression  is,  that  Mr.  Clay  stands  first  and  foremost  in  the  ranks  of  those 
who  would  desire  a  change.  I  do  not  think  there  is  the  least  abatement 
of  the  respect  and  confidence  entertained  for  him.  As  to  the  other  Western 
gentleman  whom  you  mention,  he  must  not  be  thought  of,  for  he  is  not 

1  Ante,  chap.  xvi. 


1831.]  ANTIMASONRY.  391 

with  us.  Depend  upon  it  there  is  a  negotiation  in  train  to  bring  him  out 
as  Vice-President,  to  run  on  the  ticket  with  Mr.  Calhoun.  In  my  opinion, 
he  has  very  little  weight  or  influence  in  the  country,  and  that  is  fast  de 
clining.  Our  friends  in  the  West  will  quit  him,  of  course,  in  that  event, 
as  he  must  give  up  their  interests.  I  write  now  to  say  that  two  things 
must  not  be  omitted  when  we  speculate  on  the  future ;  first,  that  General 
Jackson  will  certainly  be  a  candidate  again,  if  he  live  and  be  well ;  I  say 
certainly — I  mean  only  that  I  have  no  doubt  of  it.  Second,  that  we  can 
not  now  foresee  what  events  will  follow  from  what  is  passing  in  Pennsyl 
vania  and  New  York,  on  the  subject  of  antimasonry.  This  matter,  be 
assured,  is  not  to  be  disregarded."  1 

This  was  written  to  a  gentleman  of  much  political  activity 
in  the  ranks  of  the  opposition,  after  Mr.  "Webster  had  electrified 
the  whole  country  by  his  defence  of  the  Constitution,  at  the 
very  time  when  he  was  an  object  of  the  strongest  popular  inter 
est,  and  when  he  might  well  have  been  justified  if  he  had 
availed  himself  of  the  demonstrations  made  toward  him,  so  as 
selfishly  to  advance  his  own  claims  as  the  leader  of  a  party 
which  was  to  seek  the  overthrow  of  the  party  of  the  Adminis 
tration.  But  he  placed  himself  in  no  such  attitude;  on  the 
contrary,  he  carefully  observed  the  evidences  of  Mr.  Clay's 
position  in  the  public  regard,  willing,  if  necessary,  to  follow 
that  gentleman  as  the  person  who  might  displace  from  the 
Government  a  party  whose  principles  he  could  not  espouse,  and 
restore  it  to  what  he  believed  to  be  its  true  policy.  But  his 
attention  was  very  early  arrested  by  the  formidable  disturbance 
of  all  political  calculations  that  was  about  to  be  made  by  the 
antimasonic  movement — a  phenomenon  that  requires  a  brief 
explanation. 

This  popular  agitation  had  its  origin  in  the  excitement 
produced  by  the  abduction  and  supposed  murder  of  one  Mor- 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  492.  "  While  they  are  thus  arraying  them- 
He  had  previously  written  to  Mr.  selves  for  battle,  that  is  Calhoun  and 
Mason,  in  February,  1830,  as  follows :  Van  Buren,  there  are  two  considerations 
"  Calhoun  is  forming  a  party  against  which  are  likely  to  be  overlooked,  or  dis- 
Van  Buren,  and  as  the  President  is  sup-  regarded  by  them,  and  which  are  mate- 
posed  to  be  Van  Buren' s  man,  the  Vice-  rial  to  be  considered.  1.  The  proba- 
President  has  great  difficulty  to  separate  bility  that  General  Jackson  will  run 
his  opposition  to  Van  Buren  from  oppo-  again  ;  that  that  is  his  present  pur- 
sition  to  the  President.  Our  idea  is  to  pose,  I  am  quite  sure.  2.  The  extraor- 
let  them  pretty  much  alone ;  by  no  means  dinary  power  of  this  antimasonic  party, 
to  act  a  secondary  part  to  either.  We  especially  in  Pennsylvania."  —  ( Corre- 
never  can,  and  never  must  support  either,  spondence,  i.,  488.) 


392 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[On.  XVII. 


gan  in  1826.1  The  masonic  lodge  that  he  had  left  was  sup 
posed  to  be  responsible  for  this  act.  This  agitation  spread 
through  the  country,  drawing  largely  from  the  ranks  of  those 
who  were  opposed  to  the  reelection  of  General  Jackson.  The 
party  that  led,  and  should  have  comprehended,  all  the  effective 
opposition  to  Jackson,  had  taken  the  name  of  National  Repub 
licans.  Being  of  recent  origin,  and  having  never  yet  acted  in 
a  general  election,  it  was  not  very  thoroughly  organized.  It 
was  to  hold  a  national  convention,  however,  in  December  of 
this  year  (1831),  at  Baltimore,  for  the  purpose  of  nominating  its 
candidates  for  the  presidency  and  vice-presidency.  ~No  doubt 
would  have  been  felt  anywhere  respecting  the  selection  of  Mr. 
Clay  as  its  candidate  for  the  first  office,  if  it  had  not  been  for 
this  antimasonic  excitement.  But  Mr.  Clay  was  what  was 
called,  in  the  cant  of  the  time,  an  "  adhering  Mason,"  that  is  to 
say,  having  been  a  member  of  a  Masonic  lodge,  he  had  not 
chosen  to  withdraw  from  it,  and  to  renounce  Masonry.  The 
new  party  that  had  undertaken  a  crusade  against  the  Freemasons 
was  violently  intolerant  and  proscriptive.  It  had  grown  to  be 
powerful,  as  a  third  party,  in  the  States  of  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania,  and  to  be  capable  of  doing  much  injury  else 
where  to  the  cause  of  those  who  desired  a  change  in  the  admin 
istration  of  the  General  Government.  Some  honest  and  high- 
minded  men  had  been  drawn  into  it,  led  away  by  imaginary 
evils  that  were  believed  to  be  the  fruits  of  Freemasonry ;  spec 
ulating  and  intriguing  politicians  had  joined  in,  and  were  using 
it ;  and  the  whole  mass  of  those  who  constituted  its  rank  and 
file  were  acting  under  a  delusion  about  an  institution  which 
had  no  possible  relation  to  the  questions  of  national  policy  that 
should  alone  have  absorbed  their  attention  in  a  national 
election. 

Mr.  Webster  regarded  this  movement  from  the  first  with 


1  William  Morgan  was  abducted  from 
the  village  of  Batavia,  in  the  western 
part  of  the  State  of  New  York,  and  was 
supposed  to  have  been  sunk  in  the 
waters  of  Lake  Ontario.  On  the  one 
side  it  was  charged  that  he  was  about  to 
print  a  book,  revealing  the  secrets  of 
Masonry,  and  that  for  this  treachery  the 
Masons  had  murdered  him.  On  the 


other  side,  the  Masons  asserted  that  the 
whole  story  was  a  fraud,  and  that  the 
man  was  still  living.  That  he  was  ab 
ducted  and  drowned,  because  of  his  sup 
posed  treachery  to  the  obligations  of 
Masonry,  was,  I  suppose,  not  doubted 
by  impartial  people  who  attended  to  the 
material  facts  at  the  time  they  trans 
pired. 


1831.]  ANTIMASONRY.  393 

serious  concern.  He  knew  that  it  was  formidable,  but  he  was 
always  unwilling  to  make  it  an  issue  in  national  politics.  He 
had  never  been  a  Mason ;  and  he  did  not  believe  that  in  modern 
society  there  is  any  real  necessity,  in  order  to  subserve  any  use 
ful  purpose,  for  secret  societies  with  pass-words  and  cabalistic 
ceremonies.  He  was,  in  fact,  disposed  to  consider  the  Masonic 
institutions  as  objectionable,  so  far  as  they  imposed  on  their 
members  duties  to  each  other  that  might  conflict  with  their 
general  duties  as  citizens.  But,  as  a  national  statesman,  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  consent  to  the  introduction,  among  the 
important  questions  of  national  politics,  of  an  issue  so  irrelevant 
to  the  great  concerns  of  the  country  as  that  presented  by  anti- 
masonry.  He  was  willing  to  go  as  far  as  in  honor  he  could  go, 
to  reconcile  this  schism  in  the  body  of  those  who  sought  to  take 
the  Government  out  of  its  present  hands ;  but  he  was  not  will 
ing  to  forego  the  hope  of  electing  a  President  upon  the  prin 
ciples  professed  by  the  National  Republican  party,  and  thus 
founding  a  political  organization  that  would  be  permanently 
useful  to  great  national  ends. 

He  was  solicited  to  discourage  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Clay 
at  Baltimore.  Great  efforts  were  made  to  convince  him  that 
Mr.  Clay  could  not  be  elected,  in  consequence  of  the  determina 
tion  of  the  antimasons  not  to  vote  for  him.  Their  leaders  made 
known  to  Mr.  Webster  this  determination  in  the  winter  of  1830- 
'31,  and  their  purpose  to  nominate  a  candidate  of  their  own. 
Gentlemen  in  different  parts  of  the  country,  who  earnestly  de 
sired  the  election  of  Mr.  Clay,  also  informed  Mr.  "Webster  of  the 
dangers  attending  the  rise,  the  progress,  and  the  prescriptive 
spirit  of  this  new  organization.  His  own  opinion  concurred 
with  theirs,  that,  if  this  movement  went  on,  it  would  very 
seriously  endanger  the  election  of  Mr.  Clay.  He  knew  that  his 
own  claims  were  equal  at  least  to  those  of  Mr.  Clay,  and  he 
received  constant  assurances  from  many  important  persons  that 
there  was  nothing  they  so  much  desired  as  to  make  him  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States,  if  he  could  in  any  way  produce  a 
union  between  the  National  Republicans  and  the  antimasons. 

Under  these  circumstances,  Mr.  Webster,  had  he  chosen  to 
do  so,  might  have  said  to  the  friends  of  Mr.  Clay,  that  the  latter 
could  not  be  elected ;  and  that,  if  defeated  in  1832,  he  could 


394  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVII. 

not  again  be  brought  forward  as  a  candidate  in  1836.  To  the 
antimasons  he  could  have  said,  that  no  one  but  himself  had  the 
smallest  prospect  of  being  elected  in  opposition  to  General 
Jackson,  and  that  their  project  of  nominating  Mr.  Wirt  as  their 
candidate  was  futile.  He  might  thus  have  caused  himself  to 
be  presented  as  a  candidate  on  whom  both  branches  of  the  op 
position  could  unite ;  and,  from  the  mass  of  correspondence  that 
is  before  me,  I  am  authorized  to  say  that  this  view  was  pre 
sented  to  him  again  and  again. 

"What,  then,  were  the  reasons  that  prevented  Mr.  "Webster 
from  seeking  the  Baltimore  nomination,  to  the  exclusion  of  Mr. 
Clay? 

It  has  already  been  said  that  Mr.  Webster  had  hopes  for  the 
country,  which  looked  to  the  success  of  a  party  founded  on  def 
inite  principles  that  concerned  the  interests  of  the  country. 
He  considered  Mr.  Clay  as  a  suitable  leader  of  that  party ;  and, 
although  he  had  seen  reason,  during  the  past  year,  to  regard 
Mr.  Clay  as  less  strong  politically  than  he  had  formerly  been, 
he  was  aware  that  Mr.  Clay  had  a  large  body  of  attached 
friends  throughout  the  Union,  whose  defection,  if  caused  by  a 
rejection  of  his  claims  to  the  Baltimore  nomination,  would  ren 
der  it  impracticable  to  preserve  the  National  Republican  party 
and  to  make  it  useful  to  the  country.  Moreover,  he  had  long 
known  that  Mr.  Clay  expected  this  nomination,  and  that  he 
cherished  the  sanguine  belief  that  he  could  be  elected.  They 
had  been  in  a  free  and  friendly  correspondence  on  the  subject. 

But  Mr.  "Webster  could  not  forego  all  the  public  demonstra 
tions  of  respect  and  admiration  that  were  tendered  to  him  at 
this  period,  merely  because  of  this  pending  nomination  for  the 
presidency.  At  the  close  of  the  session  of  Congress,  a  public 
dinner  was  given  to  him  in  the  city  of  New  York,  which  was 
intended  as  a,  special  recognition  of  the  services  he  had  rendered 
to  the  country  and  to  its  constitutional  law,  in  the  debate  of 
1830  on  the  doctrines  of  nullification.  Circumstances  had 
made  it  inconvenient  for  him  to  accept  this  compliment  until 
after  the  adjournment  of  Congress,  in  March.1  With  great  fit 
ness  to  the  nature  of  the  occasion,  Chancellor  Kent  was  selected 
to  preside.  In  the  following  introductory  speech,  proposing 
1  The  dinner  was  given  March  10,  1831,  at  the  City  Hotel. 


1831.]  PUBLIC  DINNER  AT  NEW  YORK.  395 

the  health,  of  Mr.  Webster,  he  avoided  all  topics  of  a  party 
character : 

"  New  England  has  been  long  fruitful  in  great  men,  the  necessary  con 
sequence  of  the  admirable  discipline  of  her  institutions ;  and  we  are  this 
day  honored  with  the  presence  of  one  of  those  cherished  objects  of  her 
attachment  and  pride,  who  has  an  undoubted  and  peculiar  title  to  our 
regard.  It  is  a  plain  truth,  that  he,  who  defends  the  Constitution  of  his 
country  by  his  wisdom  in  council,  is  entitled  to  share  her  gratitude  with 
those  who  protect  it  by  valor  in  the  field.  Peace  has  its  victories  as  well 
as  war.  We  all  recollect  a  late  memorable  occasion,  when  the  exalted 
talents  and  enlightened  patriotism  of  the  gentleman  to  whom  I  have 
alluded  were  exerted  in  the  support  of  our  national  Union,  and  the  sound 
interpretation  of  its  charter. 

"  If  there  be  any  one  political  precept  preeminent  above  all  others,  and 
acknowledged  by  all,  it  is  that  which  dictates  the  absolute  necessity  of  a 
union  of  the  States  under  one  government,  and  that  government  clothed 
with  those  attributes  and  powers  with  which  the  existing  Constitution  has 
invested  it.  We  are  indebted,  under  Providence,  to  the  operation  and 
influence  of  the  powers  of  that  Constitution  for  our  national  honor  abroad, 
and  for  unexampled  prosperity  at  home.  Its  future  stability  depends  upon 
the  firm  support  and  due  exercise  of  its  legitimate  powers  in  all  their 
branches.  A  tendency  to  disunion,  to  anarchy  among  the  members,  rather 
than  to  tyranny  in  the  head,  has  been  heretofore  the  melancholy  fall  of  all 
the  federal  governments  of  ancient  and  modern  Europe.  Our  Union  and 
national  Constitution  were  formed,  as  we  have  hitherto  been  led  to  believe, 
under  better  auspices,  and  with  improved  wisdom.  But  there  was  a  deadly 
principle  of  disease  inherent  in  the  system.  The  assumption  by  any  mem 
ber  of  the  Union  of  the  right  to  question  and  resist,  or  annul,  as  its  own 
judgment  should  dictate,  either  the  laws  of  Congress,  or  the  treaties,  or 
the  decisions  of  the  Federal  Courts,  or  the  mandates  of  the  Executive 
power,  duly  made  and  promulgated,  as  the  Constitution  prescribes,  was  a 
most  dangerous  assumption  of  power,  leading  to  collision  and  the  destruc 
tion  of  the  system.  And  if,  contrary  to  all  our  expectations,  we  should 
hereafter  fail  in  the  grand  experiment  of  a  confederate  government,  extend 
ing  over  some  of  the  fairest  portions  of  this  continent,  and  destined  to  act, 
at  the  same  time,  with  efficiency  and  harmony,  we  should  most  grievously 
disappoint  the  hopes  of  mankind,  and  blast  forever  the  fruits  of  the 
Revolution. 

"  But,  happily  for  us,  the  refutation  of  such  dangerous  pretensions  on 
the  occasion  referred  to  was  signal  and  complete.  The  false  images  and 
delusive  theories,  which  had  perplexed  the  thoughts  and  disturbed  the 
judgments  of  men,  were  then  dissipated,  in  like  manner  as  spectres  disap 
pear  at  the  rising  of  the  sun.  The  inestimable  value  of  the  Union  and  the 
true  principles  of  the  Constitution  were  explained  by  clear  and  accurate 
reasonings,  and  enforced  by  pathetic  and  eloquent  illustrations.  The 


396  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVII. 

result  was  the  more  auspicious,  as  the  heretical  doctrines,  which  were  then 
fairly  reasoned  down,  had  been  advanced  by  a  very  respectable  portion  of 
the  Union,  and  urged  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  by  the  polished  mind, 
manly  zeal,  and  honored  name  of  a  distinguished  member  from  the 
South. 

"  The  consequences  of  that  discussion  have  been  extremely  beneficial. 
It  turned  the  attention  of  the  public  to  the  great  doctrines  of  national 
rights  and  national  union.  Constitutional  law  ceased  to  remain  wrapped 
up  in  the  breasts,  and  taught  only  by  the  responses,  of  the  living  oracles  of 
the  law.  Socrates  was  said  to  have  drawn  down  philosophy  from  the 
skies,  and  scattered  it  among  the  schools.  It  may,  with  .equal  truth,  be 
said  that  constitutional  law,  by  means  of  these  senatorial  discussions  and 
the  master  genius  that  guided  them,  was  rescued  from  the  archives  of  our 
tribunals  and  the  libraries  of  lawyers,  and  placed  under  the  eye  and  sub 
mitted  to  the  judgment  of  the  American  people.  Their  verdict  is  with  us, 
and  from  it  there  lies  no  appeal." 

Mr.  "Webster  spoke  for  an  hour  and  a  half  on  this  occasion, 
entirely  with  reference  to  the  dangers  to  which  the  Constitution 
was  exposed,  and  to  some  of  the  interesting  and  important  inci 
dents  connected  with  its  history.1  He  did  not  deem  it  fit  to 
use  this  opportunity  to  "  break  ground  "  against  the  Adminis 
tration,  as  some  of  his  friends  elsewhere  had  desired ;  for  the 
crisis  had  not  fully  passed  by,  and  it  was  essential  that  he,  who 
was  now  universally  regarded  as  the  "  Champion  of  the  Consti 
tution  "  in  the  halls  of  Congress,  should  be  in  a  position  to 
render  to  the  Administration  of  General  Jackson  all  the  aid  it 
could  need  or  would  receive  from  him  in  the  future  possible 
collision  with  the  party  of  nullification.  He  spoke  with  refer 
ence  to  this  matter  as  follows  : 

"  Seeing  the  true  grounds  of  the  Constitution  thus  attacked,  I  raised 
my  voice  in  its  favor,  I  must  confess,  without  preparation  or  previous 
intention.  I  can  hardly  say  that  I  embarked  in  the  contest  from  a  sense 
of  duty.  It  was  an  instantaneous  impulse  of  inclination,  not  acting 
against  duty,  I  trust,  but  hardly  waiting  for  its  suggestions.  I  felt  it 
to  be  a  contest  for  the  integrity  of  the  Constitution,  and  I  was  ready 
to  enter  into  it,  not  thinking  or  caring,  personally,  how  I  might  come 
out. 

"  Gentlemen,  I  have  true  pleasure  in  saying  that  I  trust  the  crisis  has, 
in  some  measure,  passed  by.  The  doctrines  of  nullification  have  received 
a  severe  and  stern  rebuke  from  public  opinion.  The  general  reprobation 
of  the  country  has  been  cast  upon  them.  Kecent  expressions  of  the  most 

1  The  speech  is  contained  in  the  first  volume  of  his  Works,  195-215. 


1831.]  GIVES  UP  A  WESTERN  TOUR.  397 

numerous  branch  of  the  national  Legislature  are  decisive  and  imposing. 
Everywhere,  the  general  tone  of  public  feeling  is  for  the  Constitution.  While 
much  will  be  yielded — everything,  almost,  but  the  integrity  of  the  Con 
stitution  and  the  essential  interests  of  the  country — to  the  cause  of  mutual 
harmony  and  mutual  conciliation,  no  ground  can  be  granted,  not  an  inch, 
to  menace  and  bluster.  Indeed,  menace  and  bluster,  and  the  putting  forth 
of  daring,  unconstitutional  doctrines,  are,  at  this  very  moment,  the  chief 
obstacles  to  mutual  harmony  and  satisfactory  accommodation.  Men  cannot 
well  reason  and  confer  and  take  counsel  together  about  the  discreet  exer 
cise  of  a  power  with  those  who  deny  that  any  such  power  rightfully  exists, 
and  who  threaten  to  blow  up  the  whole  Constitution  if  they  cannot  other 
wise  get  rid  of  its  operation.  It  is  matter  of  sincere  gratification,  gentle 
men,  that  the  voice  of  this  great  State  has  been  so  clear  and  strong,  and 
her  vote  all  but  unanimous  on  the  most  interesting  of  these  occasions  in 
the  House  of  Representatives.  Certainly,  such  respect  to  the  Union  be 
comes  New  York.  It  is  consistent  with  her  interests  and  her  character. 
That  singularly  prosperous  State,  which  now  is,  and  is  likely  to  continue  to 
be,  the  greatest  link  in  the  chain  of  the  Union,  will  ever  be,  I  am  sure,  the 
strongest  link  also.  The  great  States  which  lie  in  her  neighborhood  agree 
with  her  fully  in  this  matter.  Pennsylvania,  I  believe,  was  loyal  to  the 
Union,  to  a  man ;  and  Ohio  raises  her  voice,  like  that  of  a  lion,  against 
whatsoever  threatens  disunion  and  dismemberment.  This  harmony  of 
sentiment  is  truly  gratifying.  It  is  not  to  be  gainsaid  that  the  union  of 
opinion  in  this  great  central  mass  of  our  population,  on  this  momentous 
point  of  the  Constitution,  augurs  well  for  our  future  prosperity  and 
security." 

Immediately  after  this  dinner,  however,  it  became  neces 
sary  for  Mr.  Webster  to  decide  what  he  should  do  in  regard  to 
a  long  contemplated  journey  to  the  West,  where  he  had  never 
been,  and  where  the  desire  to  see  him  was  exceedingly  strong 
among  the  people  at  large.1  Such  a  tour,  at  this  time,  however, 
was  very  likely  to  be  regarded  with  jealousy  by  the  friends  of 
Mr.  Clay ;  for  the  question,  in  relation  to  the  expediency  of  Mr. 
Clay's  nomination  by  the  National  Republicans,  was  an  exceed 
ingly  delicate  one ;  and  Mr.  Webster's  purposes,  in  making  this 
journey,  would  certainly  have  been  liable  to  misconstruction. 
He  decided  not  to  undertake  it,  although  it  was  urged  upon  him 
with  much  earnestness,  and  although  its  present  renunciation 
was  a  postponement  of  his  own  long-cherished  desire  to  see  the 
Western  States,  and  to  converse  with  their  people.  He  sub- 

1  The  letters  on  his  files,  at  this  time,  tremely  numerous  and  pressing.  He  gave 
begging  him  to  visit  the  West,  are  ex-  up  the  journey  with  great  reluctance. 


398  LIFE  Or  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVIL 

stituted  for  this  tour  a  journey  through  the  State  of  New  York 
and  to  the  Canadas. 

As  the  time  approached  for  the  decision  of  the  question 
whether  Mr.  Clay  should  be  presented  as  the  candidate  of  the 
National  Bepublicans,  or  whether  such  a  concession  should  be 
made  to  the  antimasons  as  would  enable  them  to  dictate  the 
candidate  to  the  whole  opposition,  and  thus  to  reduce  the  char 
acter  of  that  opposition  to  the  level  of  their  own  unimportant 
issues,  Mr.  Webster  made  up  his  mind  concerning  his  personal 
duty.  He  advised  against  that  concession,  and  did  all  he  could 
to  dissuade  influential  persons  who  were  delegates  to  the  Balti 
more  Convention,  and  who  would  there  have  insisted  on  the 
nomination  of  Mr.  "Wirt  instead  of  Mr.  Clay,  from  attending  that 
body.  To  the  suggestions  that  were  made  to  him,  that,  if  Mr. 
Wirt  were  chosen  President,  he  could  have  any  place  in  the 
Cabinet  that  he  might  desire,  with  the  advantage  of  being  the 
agreed  candidate  to  succeed  Mr.  "Wirt,  or  that  he  could  now 
place  himself  in  a  position  to  command  the  support  of  the  whole 
body  of  those  who  were  opposed  to  General  Jackson  and  his 
party,  he  gave  no  countenance.  The  following  selections 
from  his  correspondence  during  the  period  that  immediately 
preceded  Mr.  Clay's  nomination  fully  explain  his  course  in 
this  respect  : 

[FBOM  MB.  JOSEPH  GALES.*] 


"  DEAR  SIB  :  I  have  regretted,  since  writing  you  a  few  days  ago,  that 
I  did  so  at  all  ;  and  especially  as,  under  the  excitement  of  surprise,  I  may 
have  considered  Judge  Spencer  more  committed  to  the  scheme  of  his  son 
than  he  is.  I  regret  it  the  more  since  I  see,  by  the  account  of  the  dinner, 
how  you  prize  his  political  and  personal  character.  I  desire  to  state  more 
precisely  how  far  I  suppose  the  matter  to  have  proceeded.  .  .  . 

"  Of  all  men  (T  can  say  in  writing  what  I  would  not  to  your  face)  I 
should  prefer  you  to  any  other  for  the  presidency.  I  hope  in  God  the 
time  will  come  which  will  give  to  that  station  *  one  Koman  more.'  At 
present  Mr.  Clay  is  so  prominently  before  the  public,  and  so  identified  with 
Western  feeling  (as  you  will  find  him),  and,  through  you  and  other  friends, 
so  acceptable  to  the  East,  and  so  qualified  by  experience,  and  so  allied, 

1  The  senior  editor  of  the  National  ical  consequence  then  and  for  a  long 
Intelligencer,  and  a  person  of  great  polit-  period  afterward. 


1831.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  399 

and,  as  it  were,  endeared  by  late  associations,  that  we  must  go  for  him  if 
we  go  alone.  I,  for  one,  cannot  bear  the  idea  of  any  other  being  thought 
of  by  those  who  approve  his  politics ;  and,  I  believe,  I  cannot  mistake  in 
supposing  your  views  to  be  the  same,  though  only  this  day  I  have  been 
told  that  the  contrary  is  reported. 

"  Can  nothing  be  done  to  save  New  York  ?  Are  there  no  high-minded 
men,  who,  like  you,  are  not  Masons,  and  who  can  say,  we,  too,  are  anti- 
masons,  but  we  cannot  sacrifice  our  country  to  our  prejudice  against  a  sect, 
not  more  persecuting,  in  the  main,  than  any  religious  sect  in  the  country  ? 
Being  no  Mason  myself,  and  always  considering  its  mummeries  absurd,  I 
may  be  believed  when  I  give  it  this  character.  Let  me  beg  of  you  to  do 
what  you  can  to  heal  this  division  among  our  friends.  Could  it  be  done, 
the  day  would  be  ours  1 

"  Most  respectfully,  I  am, 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"Jo.  GALES,  JR. 

"  P.  S. — I  would  not  copy  the  report  of  your  speech  by  '  a  steno 
grapher,'  which  has  come  on  in  the  Daily  Advertiser  and  the  Commercial 
of  to-day.  A  speech  of  an  hour  and  thirty-five  minutes  reported  in  the 
compass  of  a  column  !  I  admire  your  gallantry  (and  good  conduct,  too) 
in  vindicating  and  eulogizing  the  fame  and  character  of  Hamilton.  Few 
men  at  this  day  are  magnanimous  enough  to  dare  it.1 


[FROM  JUDGE  SPENCER.] 

"  NEAR  ALBANY,  Aprtt  19,  1831. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  You  will  recollect  that  I  promised  to  write  you,  when 
I  had  the  high  gratification  of  seeing  you  in  New  York,  and  partaking  of 
the  dinner  given  to  you  for  your  patriotic  and  unrivalled  efforts  in  defence 
of  the  Constitution ;  and  I  cannot  omit  saying  that,  on  no  former  occasion 
during  my  life,  have  I  been  more  honored  or  gratified.  You  will  believe 
me  when  I  say  that  my  motives  for  attending  that  dinner  were  my  high 
and  sincere  regard  for  you,  and  also  to  give  "my  support  to  the  doctrines 
you  advanced,  and  which  gave  rise  to  the  dinner.  Little,  indeed,  did  I  ex 
pect,  because  I  feel  that  I  did  not  merit,  the  delicate  but  high  compliment 
paid  to  me  conjointly  with  Chancellor  Kent ;  and  I  beg  you  to  accept  the  un 
feigned  assurances  of  a  most  grateful  heart  that  the  impression  is  indelible. 

"  I  did  myself  the  pleasure  of  calling  on  Mrs.  Webster  the  last  week, 
and  gave  her  some  assurance  that  I  should  visit  Boston  during  the  season ; 
and  was  pleased  to  learn  that  you  and  she  contemplated  a  visit  to  this 
part  of  the  State  during  the  summer,  and  have  her  promise  to  see  us. 

"  The  result  of  the  New- York  charter  election  is  auspicious,  and  will 

1  The  allusion  here  is  to  the  magnifi-  scribed  the  power  of  Hamilton  over  the 
cent  passage  in  the  speech  at  the  New-  national  resources. — (See  Works,  i.,  198, 
York  dinner,  in  which  Mr.  Webster  de-  et  seq.) 


400  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVIL 

have  great  influence  on  our  fall  elections.  Indeed,  I  perceive  everywhere 
indications  of  returning  sobriety  and  good  sense  on  the  part  of  the  people, 
and  am  encouraged  in  the  hope  and  belief  that  the  public  will  appreciate 
justly  the  abominations  of  the  present  administration  of  the  General  Gov 
ernment. 

"  But,  my  dear  sir,  I  am  pained  to  tell  you  that,  after  several  inter 
views  with  leading  antimasons,  if  they  are  correctly  informed,  and  I  fear 
they  are,  the  antimasons  in  this  State  will  never  support  Mr.  Clay.  We 
know  he  cannot  renounce  his  Masonic  principles  without  ruin  and  dishonor, 
and  they  say  that  unless  he  does  he  cannot  be  nominated.  Antimasonry 
is  gaining  rapidly  in  this  State,  and  they  feel  conscious  of  their  strength 
and  importance.  I  think  they  will  make  nominations,  in  September,  of 
candidates  for  President  and  Vice-President.  Some  of  them,  I  have  reason 
to  believe,  are  favorable  to  me  for  the  latter  office ;  but  I  shall  remain  per 
fectly  passive,  being  a  Mason  of  the  third  degree,  but  not  having  attended 
a  lodge  in  more  than  thirty  years,  but  determined  to  remain,  as  I  have 
been,  perfectly  neutral  between  the  Masons  and  antimasons. 

"  If  the  tickets  of  electors  are  nominated  in  this  State  (the  election 
being  by  general  ticket,  and  determined  by  a  plurality),  I  fear  that  Jack 
son  electors  would  be  chosen.  Should  that  event  appear  probable,  the  only 
course  to  be  pursued  to  prevent  that  result  would  be  for  the  opponents  of 
Jackson  to  vote  for  the  antimasonic  ticket.  This  would  probably,  and  I 
think  certainly,  defeat  the  choice  of  Jackson  electors,  and  bring  the  choice 
into  the  House.  How  it  would  be  decided  there,  or  whether  any  choice 
would  take  place,  depends  on  the  result  of  elections  to  be  held  this  spring 
and  summer.  I  merely  give  you  some  loose  speculations  founded  on  the 
present  state  of  things. 

"  Having  mentioned  my  own  name  to  you,  who  were  among  the  first  to 
suggest  the  idea,  I  need  scarcely  say  to  you  that  I  am  incapable  of  playing 
any  deceptive  game,  or  acting  at  all  with  a  view  to  my  own  election.  I 
am  as  indifferent  to  the  subject  as  any  man  can  be ;  if  I  can  be  serviceable 
to  the  country,  I  am  nothing  loth  to  be  so,  but  any  office  must  come  un 
sought  by  me. 

"  I  heartily  concur  in  the  election  of  Mr.  Clay,  not  that  I  think  him  the 
only  fit,  or  even  the  fittest,  man  for  the  station  of  President  (for  he  has 
erred  in  judgment  on  some  very  important  points),  but  because  he  seems 
to  be  called  for  by  the  great  mass  of  those  opposed  to  Jackson ;  and  union 
is  essential  to  success.  Lest  I  should  be  misunderstood  in  imputing  to 
him  errors,  I  do  not  mean  his  general  principles  of  government,  but  those 
that  are  of  a  personal  character,  such  as  his  acceptance  of  the  office  of 
Secretary  of  State  under  Mr.  Adams,  and  his  duel  with  Kandolph,  etc.,  etc. 

"  You  will,  I  am  sure,  excuse  me  for  thus  trespassing  on  your  time.  In 
the  hope  and  expectation  of  seeing  you  somewhere  or  somehow  during  the 
summer,  believe  me, 

"  Most  sincerely  yours, 

"A.  SPENCEK." 


1831.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  401 

[FROM  COMMODORE  STOCKTON.] 

"  PRINCETON,  August  19, 1831. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  We  have  had  recently  but  little  communication  on  the 
subject  of  politics,  and  this  letter  may  not  perhaps  be  acceptable. 

"  The  present  posture  of  public  affairs,  however,  tempts  me  to  commu 
nicate  to  you  some  views  which  I,  in  common  with  many  friends  here  and 
at  the  South,  entertain.  Mr.  Calhoun's  friends,  I  presume,  no  longer  hope 
for  his  success ;  his  last  address  to  the  public  has,  in  my  opinion,  settled 
that  matter.  Mr.  Clay  cannot,  in  my  poor  opinion,  succeed.  The  popu 
larity  of  General  Jackson  is  on  the  wane.  If  you  can  get  back  to  your 
free- trade  notions  of  1824,  and  to  the  old  Federal  doctrine  in  relation  to 
the  judiciary,  and  to  some  point  on  the  subject  of  internal  improvement 
where  the  funds  of  the  nation  may  be  used  safely  for  that  purpose,  without 
encouraging  the  system  of  '  log-rolling,'  so  dangerous  to  all  honest  legis 
lation,  your  chance  is  good. 

"  Most  truly, 

"R.  F.  STOCKTON." 

On  the  back  of  this  letter  is  the  following  indorsement,  in 
Mr.  Webster's  hand- writing : 

"  Answered  August  25.  Glad  to  receive  his  letter.  As  to  getting  back, 
difficulty  is  not  in  my  position,  but  in  that  of  the  country.  Country  cannot 
go  back — cannot  bear  violent  change.  Said  at  the  time  (1824)  I  would  not 
vote  to  change  back  again.1  As  to  judiciary,  never  altered  my  opinions, 
that  it  is  in  danger." 

[FROM  MR.  GALES.] 

"WASHINGTON,  October  19, 1831. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  do  not  know  that  I  am  able,  in  reply  to  your  late  favor, 
to  afford  you  any  encouraging  information.  The  nomination  of  Mr.  Wirt, 
as  far  as  I  can  perceive,  will  produce  no  defection  from  the  ranks  of  Mr. 
Clay's  friends,  but  rather  seems  to  have  rallied  them  to  his  support.  If  the 
antimasons  do  not  eventually  also  support  him,  they  will  have  the  honor 
of  reelecting  General  Jackson ;  for,  as  to  yielding  to  the  fanatical  spirit  of 
that  party  which  excludes  all  non-conformists  from  public  employ,  from 
the  jury-box,  the  witness-stand,  and  the  communion-table,  the  thing  is  too 
revolting,  if  it  were  possible.  But  the  fact  is,  that,  if  our  convention  were 
to  yield  every  thing,  it  would  accomplish  nothing  for  the  country.  The 
strength  of  Mr.  Clay  is  not  transferable.  You  will  find,  in  the  end,  that  he 
has  a  strength  in  some  States  greater  than  the  cause. 

1  This  refers,  of  course,  to  the  tariff,  see,  and  can  see  how  it  must  have  ex- 

I  have  not  been  able  to  obtain  from  the  pressed  the  character  of  this  statesman, 

representatives  of  Commodore  Stockton  whose  opinions  were  never  varied  to  suit 

Mr.  Webster's  full  answer.     But  what  it  the  exigencies  of  nominations,  at  any 

was  in  substance  the  reader  can  easily  time  in  his  whole  career. 
27 


402  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVII. 

"If  we  Lave  been  forbearing,  it  is  because  we  would. not  incur  the 
reproach  of  sacrificing  the  cause  to  our  own  personal  feelings.  We  have 

been  deeply  mortified  at  the  course  of  Mr.  R ,  Mr.  A ,  Mr.  Wirt  (if, 

in  fact,  he  be  with  them),  and  such  persons  as  Mr.  B and  Mr.  S , 

who  have  sacrificed  to  their  pride  and  supposed  personal  interest  their 
principles  and  their  friends.  We  are  most  unfortunate  in  finding  in  the 
front  rank  against  us  those  who  ought  to  have  led  our  own  forlorn  hope. 
You  may  have  heard  before  now  that  your  own  name  was  used  as  authority 

for  the  impossibility  of  electing  Mr.  Clay.     Mr.  B denied  to  me  having 

used  it ;  but  it  was  used  by  somebody.    is  the  father  of  the  intrigue 

which  procured  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Wirt,  which  was  literally  made  de 
tolls  circumstantibus,  as  Mr.  Walsh  says,  with  the  hope  of  forcing  the  De 
cember  Convention  to  take  a  candidate  of  their  selection.  If  there  be  any 
mischief  brewing  in  which  he  could  have  a  hand,  this  promising  young 
gentleman  is  always  at  the  bottom  of  it.  He  is  the  serpent  that  tempted 
Mr.  Wirt,  whether  he  succeeded  in  seducing  him  or  not,  of  which  I  am  not 
yet  certain.  Poor  Mr.  R ! 

"The  worst  that  can  befall  us  is  that  the  antimasons  will  force  the 
reelection  of  General  Jackson.  This  is  bad  enough,  to  be  sure ;  but  is  it 
not  better  than  to  subject  the  nation  to  the  rule  of  a  frantic  fanaticism,  or 
of  still  more  frantic  Jacobinism,  by  the  name  of  Nullification,  even  under 
the  cloak  of  Free  Trade  ?  The  General  has  a  decent  Cabinet  at  last  (though 
I  have  no  sympathy  whatever  even  with  them),  and  it  may  be  hoped  would 
not  be  allowed  further  to  disgrace  the  country.  We  do  not  feel  so  confident 
of  what  would  happen  under  an  antimasonic  or  nullification  dynasty,  and 
would  rather  '  bear  the  ills  we  have  than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of. 

"  We  hope  yet  for  the  best.  The  antimasonic  party,  I  think,  except  in 
Vermont,  is  not  on  the  increase ;  in  some  parts  it  is  on  the  wane.  If  it  can 
feel  this,  and  especially  if  Mr.  Wirt  can  feel  it,  there  is  yet  a  faint  hope  for 
our  cause.  But,  if  there  be  not,  let  us  die  with  harness  on  our  backs, 
having  the  consolation  at  least  of  the  company  of  a  noble  army  of  martyrs. 

"  Upon  these  views,  or  any  other,  I  shall  be  happy  to  have  the  advan 
tage  of  your  information  and  counsel.  They  are  my  own  purely,  made  up 
in  my  daily  rides  between  my  cottage  and  my  office. 

"  With  true  respect  and  the  highest  consideration,  I  am 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  Jo.  GALES,  JR. 

"Hon.  D.Webster." 


[FKOM  JUDGE  SPENCEK.] 

"ALBANY,  November 24  1831.  ' 

"  MY  DEAB  SIB  :  I  am  very  much  obliged  by  your  friendly  letter  of  the 
16th,  and  finding  that  we  concur  in  opinion  that,  from  my  opinions,  my 
attendance  on  the  Baltimore  Convention  would  not  be  advisable,  I  shall 
not  attend. 


1831.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  403 

"  I  hope  I  may  be  mistaken  in  believing  that  Mr.  Clay's  nomination  en 
sures  the  reelection  of  General  Jackson.  I  cannot,  even  in  deference  to 
you,  renounce  the  belief  that,  were  Mr.  Clay  to  decline,  and  should  Mr. 
"Wirt  be  nominated  at  Baltimore,  he  would  probably  be  elected.  I  can 
easily  conceive  that  some  of  our  friends  may  now  declare  their  preference 
of  Jackson  over  Mr.  Wirt,  yet  I  do  not  believe,  unless  they  are  insane,  they 
would  execute  their  threats. 

"  I  feel  anxious  not  to  be  misunderstood  in  recommending  the  course  I 
have,  and  I  believe  you  do  me  justice.  It  appeared  to  me  that  the  first 
and  greatest  object  was  to  defeat  the  reelection  of  General  Jackson,  and 
that  our  proceedings  were  to  be  subservient  to  that  end.  I  believed,  and 
yet  believe,  that  every  well-informed  man  must  be  sensible  that  Mr.  Clay 
cannot  be  elected,  because,  in  his  support,  the  votes  of  the  great  body  of 
General  Jackson's  opposers  cannot  be  united,  for  various  causes,  but  prin 
cipally  from  the  prevalence  of  antirnasonry  in  this  and  several  other  States. 
I  may  labor  under  false  impressions  as  to  some  of  the  States,  but  I  think 
I  know  something  of  this  State,  and  here  I  know  he  cannot  get  the  elec 
toral  vote. 

"  I  did  not  think  Mr.  Clay's  friends  so  irrational  as  to  persevere  in  nomi 
nating  him,  when  his  defeat  and  consequent  depression  were  so  apparent. 

"  I  could  not  perceive  any  reasonable  objection  to  Mr.  Wirt  or  his  prin 
ciples.  Indeed,  I  thought  that  his  nomination  was  a  providential  act  to 
save  the  nation  from  further  dishonor  and  injury,  and  that  all  men  who 
detested  Jackson  and  his  administration  would  cheerfully  unite  in  his 
support. 

"I  do  not  understand  it  to  be  the  antimasonic  creed,  'that  antima- 
sonry  alone  is  a  principle  broad  enough  to  save  the  country  and  maintain 
the  Government.'  Their  creed  is  that  the  practical  evils  of  Masonry,  as 
illustrated  in  New  York,  are  of  such  an  alarming  nature,  and  so  vitally 
concern  all  good  government,  that  it  must  be  put  down  by  public  opinion. 
They  think,  and  certainly  with  a  show  of  reason,  that  this  can  be  done  in 
no  other  way  than  through  the  ballot-boxes.  Mr.  Wirt  expressly  disclaims 
every  thing  like  persecution,  or  making  Masonry  or  antimasonry  a  test  for 
office.  In  short,  as  I  understand  the  matter,  he  has  done  all  that  they  ever 
expect  of  him ;  he  has  borne  his  testimony  to  the  supremacy  of  the  laws 
and  the  free  course  of  justice. 

"  It  is  undoubtedly  true,  as  you  suggest,  that,  even  in  New  York,  the 
high  Masons  will  not  support  Mr.  Wirt,  and  would  not  under  any  circum 
stances;  this  we  disregard,  because  their  defection  would  be  more  than 
compensated  by  antimasons  from  the  Jackson  ranks. 

"  I  hope  a  part  at  least  of  New  England  will  be  found,  a  year  hence, 
sound  in  Mr.  Clay's  support,  but  I  confess  your  recent  election,  especially 
after  Governor  Lincoln's  satisfactory  letter,  gives  demonstration  somewhat 
alarming  as  regards  your  own  State. 

"  It  is  our  duty  to  offer  up  earnest  supplications  '  for  long  life  to  all 
good  men  in  office.'  Bad  men,  however,  have  a  remarkable  tenacity  of 


404  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVII. 

life,  and  I  fear  they  will  live  long  enough,  not,  indeed,  absolutely  to  ruin 
the  country,  but  to  bring  on  disorders  and  confusion,  to  put  us  back,  God 
only  knows  how  long.  We  may  live  to  see  the  Bank  of  the  United  States 
put  down  and  the  judiciary  destroyed.  We  now  see,  and  feel,  too,  the 
many  evils  already  pressing  on  us  by  the  misrule  of  this  corrupt,  mean,  and 
wicked  Administration. 

"  I  have  one  consolation :  I  have  done  all  I  could  to  avert  these  evils. 
"  I  may  avail  myself  of  your  kind  invitation  to  write  you,  and  I  cer 
tainly  will  if  I  can  say  aught  useful  or  interesting. 
"  With  high  respect  and  regard, 

"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"A.  SPENCEK. 
"  Hon.  Daniel  Webster." 

The  National  Republican  Convention,  which  assembled  at 
Baltimore,  nominated  Mr.  Clay  for  the  Presidency,  with  great 
unanimity  and  enthusiasm,  and  placed  the  name  of  John  Sar- 
geant,  of  Pennsylvania,  on  the  same  ticket  for  the  Yice-Presi- 
dency.  I  am  indebted  to  one  of  the  members  of  that  body, 
the  Hon.  Hiram  Ketchum,  of  New  York,  an  intimate  and 
much-loved  friend  of  Mr.  "Webster,  for  the  following  state 
ments  : 

"  I  have  no  letters  from  Mr.  Webster  in  respect  to  Mr.  Clay's  nomina 
tion  for  the  Presidency  in  1831,  but,  previous  to  that  nomination,  I  had 
very  full  and  free  conversations  with  him  in  respect  to  it.  He  did  not 
favor  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Clay,  and  I  know  that  he  desired  the  nomina 
tion  for  himself.  I  then,  as  in  all  subsequent  time,  was  in  favor  of  Mr. 
Webster's  nomination ;  but  National  Republican  friends  here,  with  whom 
I  acted,  overruled  my  preference,  and  I  was  compelled  to  say  so  to  Mr. 
Webster  himself.  He  acquiesced,  and  the  Convention,  of  which  I  was  a 
member,  unanimously,  by  open  nomination,  every  man  rising  in  his  place 
and  naming  his  candidate,  put  Mr.  Clay  in  nomination  for  President,  and 
John  Sargeant  for  Vice-President.  During  the  session  of  the  Convention 
Mr.  Webster  passed  through  Baltimore,  on  his  way  to  Washington,  and 
visited  one  of  its  sessions.  After  the  convention  had  finished  its  work, 
quite  a  large  number  of  its  members,  I  among  them,  went  to  Washington. 
Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Nathan  Appleton,  then  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  from  Massachusetts,  invited  us  to  meet  Mr.  Clay  at  dinner. 
Several  distinguished  persons  were  present ;  among  them,  the  late  Alex 
ander  H.  Everett,  Governor  Bradish,  Senator  Johnson,  of  Louisiana,  etc. 
I  think  there  was  very  little  confidence  in  the  success  of  our  ticket,  yet  I 
went  into  the  canvass  with  all  the  ardor  of  youth.  Mr.  A.  H.  Everett,  on 
that  visit,  dined  with  Mr.  John  Quincy  Adams,  who  made  no  allusion  to 
the  work  of  the  Convention." 


1831.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  405 

The  session  of  Congress  which,  followed  this  nomination  of 
Mr.  Clay  for  the  Presidency  was  not  an  eventful  one.  The  only 
subject  in  reference  to  which  Mr.  Webster  made  any  considera 
ble  exertion  was  that  of  a  bill  for  the  relief  of  insolvent  debtors 
of  the  United  States,  introduced  and  carried  through  the  House 
by  Mr.  Buchanan;  to  whose  zealous  devotion  to  this  object, 
and  his  successful  lead  in  its  accomplishment,  Mr.  Webster  paid 
a  high  compliment  in  the  Senate.  After  the  termination  of  the 
session,  the  following  correspondence  took  place  between  them 
in  reference  to  the  bill,  which  had  become  a  law : 


[FROM  MB.  BUCHANAN.] 

"  LANCASTER,  September  13, 1831. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  enclose  you  the  copy  of  a  letter  which  I  have  addressed 
to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  because  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  using 
your  name  in  it.  If  you  consider  the  reference  incorrect,  it  will  afford  me 
pleasure  to  correct  it  immediately.  In  looking  over  your  remarks  on  the 
bill  for  the  relief  of  insolvent  debtors,  I  was  forcibly  struck  with  the  lib 
eral  and  kind  expressions  which  you  used  in  relation  to  my  exertions  in 
the  House.  Rest  assured  that  they  are  duly  appreciated  by  me,  and  that  I 
consider  it  '  praise,  indeed,  to  be  praised  by  you.7 

"  Should  your  recollection  correspond  with  mine  in  relation  to  this  bill, 
if  you  thought  proper  to  interpose,  a  word  from  you  would  have  a  pow 
erful  effect  in  correcting  the  error  into  which  the  Attorney-General  and 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  have  fallen. 

"  Please  to  present  my  respectful  compliments  to  Mrs.  Webster,  and  be 
lieve  me  to  be  truly  yours, 

"JAMES  BUCHANAN. 

"  Hon.  Daniel  Webster." 

[TO  MR.  BUCHANAN.] 

"BOSTON,  September  24, 1831. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  the  honor  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your 
letter  of  the  18th  instant,  enclosing  the  copy  of  one  from  yourself  to  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  relative  to  the  construction  of  the  act  of  the  last 
session  for  the  relief  of  certain  insolvents.  Your  communication  furnished 
me  with  the  first  information  of  the  construction,  proposed  to  be  put  on 
that  act,  at  the  departments.  I  confess  I  am  quite  surprised  by  it.  No 
such  construction  ever  occurred  to  me  as  being  possible,  nor  was  ever  sug 
gested,  to  my  knowledge,  by  any  one.  The  language  of  the  act  appears  to 
me  to  be,  as  it  was  intended  it  should  be,  general,  and  unambiguous.  I 
must  acknowledge  I  can  see  no  ground,  upon  which  its  application  can 


406  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVII. 

be  restricted  in  the  manner  proposed,  which  I  am  quite  sure  would  be,  as 
you  say,  quite  at  war  with  the  intentions  of  every  one  of  those  who  con 
curred  in  the  law. 

"  With  the  most  unfeigned  respect  for  the  opinions  of  the  Attorney- 
General,  I  cannot  persuade  myself  to  think  that  he  has  taken  the  right 
view  of  the  provisions  of  the  act.  If  he  has  done  so,  we  were  very  clumsy 
law-makers. 

"  I  am,  dear  sir,  with  regard, 

u  Your  obedient  servant, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTEK." 

[TO  MB.  BUCHANAN.] 

"  BOSTON,  September  24, 1831. 

"  DEAR  SIB  :  The  decision  at  the  Treasury,  on  our  (or  more  properly 
on  your)  act  of  the  last  session,  astonished  me.  I  had  never  dreamed  of 
any  such  thing.  If  you  think  the  enclosed  expression  of  opinon  will  do 
any  good,  you  are  at  liberty  to  communicate  it. 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  and  friendly  expressions ;  and,  as  I  did  you 
no  more  than  justice,  in  regard  to  your  agency  in  the  passing  of  the  Insol 
vents'  Relief  Bill,  I  trust  I  shall  on  no  occasion  do  you  less.  I  would  ex 
press  the  hope  of  seeing  you  at  Washington,  in  the  winter,  if  it  were  not 
that  such  an  expression  might  imply  an  expectation  that  you  are  not  to  be 
elsewhere  at  that  time.  Not  knowing  at  all  how  that  may  be,  I  must  con 
fine  myself  to  the  tender  of  general  good  wishes,  and  to  the  assurances  of 
esteem  and  regard. 

"D.  W." 

The  following  letters  relate  to  the  purchase  of  his  father's 
farm  •  to  the  fragment  of  his  autobiography  which  he  wrote 
this  year ;  to  the  strong  interest  which  he  took  in  the  removal 
of  Mr.  Jeremiah  Mason  to  Boston,  and  to  the  marriage  of  his 
brother-in-law,  Mr.  Paige. 

[TO  HIS  NEPHEW,   MB.  C.  B.  HADDOCK.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  February  6, 1831. 

"  MY  DEAB  NEPHEW  :  I  heard  from  you  at  the  early  part  of  the  session, 
and  have  omitted  to  answer  longer  than  I  intended.  I  was  at  Salisbury 
after  I  saw  you,  and  gave  directions  about  the  farm.  I  think  it  best  to  put 
an  end  to  separate  interests  there  as  soon  as  convenient.  I  suppose  you 
have  by  this  time  obtained  your  license  to  sell.  My  hope  and  expectation 
now  are  to  be  in  Boston  the  first  day  of  April ;  perhaps  a  little  earlier. 
If  you  could  arrange  the  sale  for  about  the  middle  or  20th  of  April,  I  could 
conveniently  attend  it,  as  I  propose  to  visit  Salisbury  in  that  month.  In 


1831.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  407 

May  and  June  I  doubt  whether  it  will  be  in  my  power.  If  events  come 
about  according  to  my  wishes,  I  hope  to  run  away  to  Ohio  about  the  1st 
of  May. 

"Partly  on  my  own  motion,  and  partly  at  the  request  of  friends,  I  have 
been  putting  into  writing  something  of  my  early  history,  dates,  incidents, 
etc.,  touching  early  years.  I  have  not  made  much  progress,  nor  is  there, 
indeed,  much  to  be  said,  but  I  have  run  over  a  few  sheets  of  paper.  It  has 
occurred  to  me,  in  connection  with  this  subject,  to  suggest  to  you  the  ex 
pediency,  as  of  your  own  motion,  of  writing  to  Rev.  Dr.  Wood,  of  Bos- 
cawen,  who,  I  hope,  is  yet  living.  He  may  have  few  or  no  incidents  to 
relate,  but  his  general  recollection  may  possibly  be  worth  preserving.  I 
need  not  enlarge ;  you  will  understand  me.  It  may  be  well  to  tell  him 
that  the  object  is  to  preserve  materials,  not  to  be  used  in  his  lifetime  or 
mine.  I  wish  he  would  say  something  of  my  brother,  whom  he  knew  so 
well  and  so  long. 

"  The  book,1 1  have  seen.  It  is  well  enough,  except  the  awful  face,  which 
seems  to  be  placed  in  the  front  of  the  volume,  like  a  scarecrow  in  a  corn 
field,  to  frighten  off  all  intruders. 

"  Pray,  let  me  hear  from  you,  and  tell  me  all  you  have  to  say,  de  omni 
bus  rebus.  We  have  a  most  severe  winter  here ;  this  is  as  frosty  a  morning 
as  might  become  the  neighborhood  of  Kearsarge.  Mrs.  Webster  desires 
her  regards,  and  I  am 

"  Dear  Charles,  always  truly  yours, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTEK." 


[TO  ME.  MASON.] 

"NEW  YORK,  AprilW,  1831. 

"  MY  DEAK  Sm :  I  came  here  Saturday,  to  bring  my  wife  back  to  Bos 
ton,  after  spending  a  few  days  here  with  her  friends.  Having  leisure  this 
p.  M.,  I  incline  to  give  it  to  the  purpose  of  writing  to  you ;  but  I  am  not 
about  to  speak  on  the  subject  of  the  resignation  of  our  wise  ministry  at 
Washington,  or  any  other  public  subject.  It  is  to  talk  of  yourself.  Before 
I  left  home  last  fall,  I  had  resolved  to  make  one  more  effort  to  bring  you 
up  to  Boston.  For  particular  reasons  then  existing,  I  was  induced  to  post 
pone  the  mentioning  of  the  subject.  I  write  now  simply  to  execute  that 
intention ;  and  to  entreat  you,  earnestly,  to  consider  the  expediency  of 
such  a  measure.  I  will  not  presume  to  enter  into  the  considerations  which 
recommend  it,  at  least  in  my  opinion ;  but  I  will  say  that  my  opinion  is 
strong  and  decisive  on  the  point.  I  am  persuaded  a  removal  will  add  to 
your  happiness,  and  that  of  your  family.  You  will  find  as  much  profes 
sional  employment  as  you  may  wish  to  engage  in ;  and  you  will  find  your 
self  surrounded  by  warm  friends,  who  estimate  you  as  you  deserve  to  be 
estimated.  Your  boys  are  now  provided  for.  Your  daughters  are  better 

1  A  volume  of  Mr.  Webster's  speeches. 


408  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVII. 

at  Boston  than  Portsmouth ;  at  Boston,  you  will  find  associations,  topics, 
congenial  minds,  and  objects  of  greater  interest  than  now  surround  you. 
New  York,  perhaps,  might  be  still  better.  But  Boston  is  something. 

"  I  am  persuaded  you  dislike  the  idea  of  removal,  and  that  that  is  the 
main  obstacle.  But  that  is  a  thing  of  a  week.  Once  settled,  and  all  that 
thing  is  over. 

"  My  dear  sir,  although  it  would  add  greatly  to  my  happiness  that  you 
should  come  to  Boston,  I  would  not  advise  it,  certainly,  if  I  did  not  think 
it  would  promote  yours,  and  promote  it  greatly.  Indeed,  I  reproach  my 
self  for  not  having  urged  this  point  with  you  oftener.  I  wish  to  do  it  now 
with  earnestness ;  I  am  sure  I  do  it  with  sincerity. 

"  Ever  truly  and  affectionately  your  friend, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 


[TO  MRS.   A.   P.  WEBSTER.1] 

"  BOSTON,  June  14, 1831. 

"  MY  DEAR  SISTER  :  Your  letter  has  come  to  hand  quite  apropos.  It 
is  our  intention  to  set  off  on  Thursday  morning  for  Boscawen,  by  way  of 
Nashua  village.  Weather  being  favorable,  we  may  be  expected  Thursday 
afternoon  at  Nashua,  and  shall  be  happy  to  have  you  go  north  with  us.  I  am 
under  the  necessity  of  being  at  Concord  at  noon  on  Friday,  so  that  I  shall 
•be  obliged  to  put  you  to  the  distress  of  an  early  rising  on  that  day.  In  ad 
dition  to  Mrs.  Webster,  Julia  will  come  along.  Edward  begins  to  beg 
hard  to  go,  and,  as  his  mother  is  on  his  side,  he  also  may  prevail.  We  shall 
have  room  for  you.  This  is  a  great  day  with  us,  as  Mr.  Paige  is  to  be 
married  this  evening. 

"  The  dawn  is  overcast,  etc." 

"  The  happy  pair  set  out  to-morrow  or  next  day  for  the  Springs,  the 
Falls,  and  other  points  of  the  grand  tour. 
"  Give  my  best  regards  to  Mrs.  Abbott. 

"  Yours  always  affectionately, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"  P.  S. — Julia  wrote  you  yesterday,  so  that,  probably,  your  house 
hold  will  learn  our  intentions,  that  is  to  say,  provided  you  have  left  a 
secretary  to  attend  to  your  correspondence." 

In  the  course  of  this  year,  Mr.  Walsh,  the  editor  of  the 
Philadelphia  Quarterly  fieview,  desired  to  have  an  article  re 
viewing  Mr.  "Webster's  recently  published  speeches.  It  was 
written  for  him,  at  the  request  of  Judge  Story,  by  Mr.  Tieknor, 
and  appeared  in  his  eighteenth  number.  It  was  subsequently 

1  Then  at  Nashua. 


1831.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  409 

reprinted,  and  largely  circulated  in  pamphlet.     The  following 
correspondence  relates  to  the  article  and  the  reprint : 


[TO  MR.  TICKNOR.] 

"  Saturday  Morning. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  received  a  copy  of  the  Quarterly,  but,  before  I  had  read 
the  article,  lent  it  to  Mr.  Dutton.  He  has  returned  it  with  this  note. 
Yesterday,  I  went  carefully  through  the  article.  It  is  all  that  I  could 
possibly  desire.  There  is  nothing  that  need  be  changed.  If  it  should  be 
printed  separately,  room  would  be  more  at  command,  and  there  are  pos 
sibly  one  or  two  points  which  might  be  a  little  more  expanded.  I  have 
made  some  attempt  to  see  you ;  which  I  shall  renew  so  soon  as  the  '  all- 
conquering  sun  shall  intermit  his  wrath.'  I  hope  you  are  alive  to-day. 

"  Yours, 

"  D.  W." 

[TO  MR.    TICKNOR.] 

"  Thursday  Morning. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  believe  things  will  be  put  in  train  for  a  reprint,  and,  as 
you  have  leisure,  will  beg  of  you  to  think  of  the  expediency  of  expanding 
two  topics  a  little  more. 

"  1.  The  nullification  topic,  about  which  we  have  conversed. 

"  2.  The  finance  topic,  with  a  pretty  cogent  page  or  two,  in  favor 
of  maintaining  the  national  bank. 

"  In  mustering  over  some  old  papers  the  other  day,  I  found  a  speech,  on 
the  subject  of  the  present  bank.  I  did  not  stop  to  read  it,  and,  like  every 
body  else,  had  quite  forgotten  it.  It  may  contain  something.  I  will  send 
it  to  you  on  my  return. 

"  We  are  off  at  nine  o'clock  for  Boscawen. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"Mr.  Ticknor." 

[TO  MR.  TICKNOR.] 

1831. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  had  time  to  add  but  very  little  to  the  sheets 
you  have  already  had,  and  no  time  to  read  over  any  thing.  But  I  will  en 
deavor  between  this  and  nine  o'clock  this  p.  M.  to  bring  the  important 
narrative  down  to  1816.1 

"  Yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

1  The  autobiography,  which  was,  from  Mr.  Ticknor,  to  whom  it  was  entrusted 
its  first  inception,  in  the  possession  of  sheet  by  sheet,  as  it  was  written. 


410  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVII. 

"  N".  B. — I  have  seen  no  such.  Congress  for  talents  as  the  fourteenth.  It 
commenced  its  first  session  December,  '15,  and  terminated  its  second  March, 
'17.  If  you  run  over  the  Journal,  you  will  see  that  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives  was  particularly  strong. 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  there  is  any  thing  of  mine,  Congressional, 
earlier  than  my  return  to  Congress  in  1823,  of  interest,  beyond  what  you 
have. 

"  I  had  a  hand,  with  Mr.  Eppes  and  others,  in  overthrowing  Mr.  Mon 
roe's  conscription,  1814,  and  [there  is]  a  long  speech  on  that  subject,  in 
manuscript.1  But  I  do  not  think  it  worth  while  to  notice  it. 

"  So  of  my  resolutions  in  1813.  They  were  right — our  Government  was 
completely  cajoled  by  France,  but  whether  it  is  worth  while  to  allude  to 
that  now,  I  know  not,  but  I  doubt  whether  it  is.  I  will  be  at  home  this 
evening,  if  you  want  to  talk,  and  will  send  me  word. 

"  D.  W." 
1  The  speech  is  now  lost. 


1832.]  THE  TARIFF  SYSTEM.  411 


CHAPTER   XYIII. 
1831-1832. 

MODIFICATION  OF  THE  TARIFF BILL  TO  RENEW  \HE  CHARTER  OF 

THE  BANK PRESIDENT  JACKSON?S   "  VETO  " SPEECH  ON  THE 

PRESIDENT'S   OBJECTIONS — REJECTION  OF  MR.  VAN  BUREN  AS 

MINISTER  TO  ENGLAND REPORT  ON  THE  APPORTIONMENT  OF 

REPRESENTATIVES FIRST  PURCHASE  AT  MARSHFIELD. 

THE  session  of  Congress  which  commenced  in  December, 
1831,  and  extended  to  July,  1832,  was  fruitful  in  events 
and  in  discussions  that  were  to  affect  the  country  for  a  long 
period  of  time.  It  was  at  this  session  that  an  effort  was  made 
to  overthrow  the  tariff  system;  that  the  bill  to  renew  the 
charter  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  was  passed  by  Con 
gress  and  "  vetoed  "  by  the  President ;  and  that  the  Senate  re 
fused  to  confirm  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Yan  Buren  as  Minister 
to  Great  Britain. 

The  tariff  system  under  which  the  manufactures  of  the  coun 
try  had  been  carried  on  since  1824  had  established  the  general 
principle  of  protection  as  a  settled  policy.  On  this  ground,  and 
because  the  legislation  of  Congress  had  strongly  tended  to  force 
capital  into  manufactures,  Mr.  Webster  supported  the  system. 
He  was  unwilling  to  go  back,  because  he  was  satisfied  that  the 
industrial  pursuits  of  the  country  could  not  bear  the  change. 
In  the  winter  of  1831-'32,  the  subject  was  first  introduced  into 
the  Senate  by  Mr.  Clay,  who  offered  a  resolution,  declaring  that 
the  duties  on  imported  articles,  which  did  not  come  into  com 
petition  with  similar  articles  made  or  produced  in  the  United 


412  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVIII. 

States,  ought  to  be  forthwith  abolished,  except  the  duties  on 
wines  and  silks,  and  that  these  ought  to  be  reduced.  He  pro 
posed  that  the  Committee  of  Finance  be  instructed  to  report  a 
bill  accordingly. 

Mr.  Clay  was  led  to  this  step  toward  the  abolition  and  re 
duction  of  certain  classes  of  duties  by  the  fact  that  the  public 
debt  was  nearly  extinguished,  and  that  the  Government  would 
no  longer  need  such  a  revenue  as  it  was  now  receiving.  But  he 
meant  .to  take  the  step  without  abandoning  the  principle  of  pro 
tection.  Accordingly,  in  the  elaborate  speech  which  he  deliv 
ered  in  support  of  his  resolution,  he  declared,  repeatedly  and 
emphatically,  that  this  principle  was  not  to  be  surrendered, 
either  by  a  sudden  or  a  gradual  abolition  of  the  duties  on  the 
protected  articles.  A  long  and  occasionally  angry  discussion 
ensued — a  gathering  of  the  clouds  that  portended  the  coming 
storm.  The  political  party  which,  in  general,  supported  the 
Administration  of  General  Jackson,  and  which  intended  to 
reelect  him  to  the  Presidency,  was  then  divided  into  two  sec 
tions,  in  the  Senate,  on  the  subject  of  a  protective  tariff.  One 
of  these  sections  adhered  to  the  protective  system ;  the  other 
was  bitterly  hostile  to  it.  The  latter  was  led  by  Mr.  Hayne,  of 
South  Carolina,  who,  in  answering  Mr.  Clay,  reopened  the  whole 
subject,  attacking  both  the  policy  and  the  constitutional  right 
of  protection,  and  throwing  out  many  intimations  of  the  dangers 
that  threatened  the  Union  if  the  protective  system  should  be 
retained.  He  did  not,  however,  again  directly  introduce  the 
doctrines  of  nullification. 

As  the  discussion  proceeded,  the  subject  became  complicated 
with  that  of  the  proceeds  of  the  sales  of  the  public  lands,  and 
with  the  question,  to  what  committee  Mr.  Clay's  resolution 
should  be  sent.  At  length,  with  many  other  propositions,  the 
whole  subject  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Manufactures. 
Mr.  Dickerson,  of  New  Jersey,  chairman  of  that  committee,  re 
ported  a  bill  to  reduce  the  duties  on  certain  articles  which  were 
not  in  competition  with  articles  manufactured  in  this  country, 
and  reserving  the  other  subjects  for  a  further  report.  This  was 
assailed  by  the  antiprotection  party  as  a  virtual  indorsement 
of  Mr.  Clay's  plan,  and  a  confirmation  of  the  protective  system. 
Another  long  and  exciting  discussion  followed,  and,  on  the  sug- 


1832.]  DISCUSSION   ON  THE   TARIFF..  413 

gestion  of  constitutional  doubts  whether  a  bill  for  reducing 
duties  could  originate  in  the  Senate,  the  bill,  on  the  30th  of 
March,  1832,  was  laid  upon  the  table,  to  await  the  action  of  the 
House  of  Kepresentatives. 

A  bill  from  the  House  afterward  came  into  the  Senate,  which 
made  considerable  changes  in  the  existing  duties.  In  the  Senate 
it  was  amended,  and  on  these  amendments  the  two  houses  dis 
agreed  ;  but  the  result  of  a  conference  was  that  the  bill  was 
finally  passed,  the  Senate  receding  from  its  amendments.  It 
reduced  the  duties  to  what  might  be  called  a  revenue  standard, 
on  many  articles,  leaving  woollen  and  cotton  goods  and  iron  as 
they  previously  stood.  It  was,  therefore,  denounced  by  Mr. 
Hayne  as  an  adherence  to  the  protective  system,  which,  he  said, 
it  recognized  as  the  settled  policy  of  the  country.  It  was,  he 
asserted,  "  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  resolution  of  the  Sen 
ator  from  Kentucky  reduced  to  the  form  of  a  law."  He  con 
cluded  with  the  declaration  that  "  the  hopes  of  the  South  are  at 
an  end,  and,  as  far  as  their  prosperity  is  dependent  on  Federal 
legislation,  their  ruin  is  sealed." 

In  all  this  discussion  Mr.  "Webster  took  no  other  part  than 
to  intervene  occasionally  for  the  proper  adjustment  of  particular 
duties,  and  to  express  his  disapprobation  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  conference  committee  of  the  Senate  had  receded  from  an 
amendment  raising  the  existing  duties  on  woollens.  He  was, 
in  truth,  watching  this  discussion  with  great  but  almost  silent 
anxiety,  as  he  well  knew  it  to  be  the  forerunner  of  events  in  the 
South  that  he  had  long  anticipated  as  possible,  and  because  the 
relations  to  this  subject  of  many  of  the  supporters  of  the  Ad 
ministration  were  to  have  a  serious  effect  on  the  future  peace 
of  the  country.  Mr.  Calhoun  occupied  the  chair  of  the  Senate 
as  Yice-President.  Upon  some  remark  by  Mr.  Clay  concerning 
his  opinions,  in  the  course  of  this  debate,  he  broke  the  silence 
of  the  Chair  so  far  as  to  say  that  he  held  the  protective  system 
to  be  unconstitutional.  He  had  already  put  forth  a  pamphlet, 
which  contained  a  labored  defence  of  nullification,  which  Mr. 
Webster  regarded  as  "  far  the  ablest  and  most  plausible,  and 
therefore  the  most  dangerous,  vindication  of  that  particular  form 
of  revolution  which  has  yet  appeared."  1  Mr.  Calhoun  had 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  526. 


414  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVIII. 

been  elected  Yice-President  by  the  same  conglomerate  party 
that  had  elected  General  Jackson  to  the  presidency ;  and  what 
the  effect  of  an  attempt  at  nullification  of  the  tariff  might  be 
upon  that  party,  and  upon  the  course  of  the  Administration, 
was  at  this  moment  entirely  problematical.  To  enter,  there 
fore,  at  this  time,  upon  a  labored  defence  of  the  principle  of 
protection,  and  the  constitutional  right  of  Congress  to  enforce 
it,  appeared  to  Mr.  "Webster  both  superfluous  and  inexpedient. 
He  was  himself  in  no  degree  responsible  for  its  original  intro 
duction  into  the  policy  of  the  country ;  and  now  that  there  were 
a  considerable  number  of  the  leading  friends  of  the  Administra 
tion  in  Congress  determined  to  continue  it — a  number  suffi 
ciently  large,  when  added  to  the*  votea  of  the  opposition,  to  up 
hold  it  as  the  decisive  determination  of  Congress — he  con 
sidered  it  to  be  rather  his  duty  to  forecast  the  measures  by 
which  the  authority  of  Congress  was  to  be  upheld  against  the 
threatened  nullification,  and  by  which  the  President  and  his 
supporters  should  be  induced  and  enabled  to  encounter  that  re 
sistance. 

But  there  were  other  discussions  and  measures  of  this  session 
in  respect  to  which  Mr.  "Webster  felt  obliged  to  take  a  part  that 
necessarily  prevented  any  close  political  sympathy,  at  this  time, 
between  him  and  the  President,  or  the  President's  party,  which 
might  otherwise  have  sprung  out  of  Mr.  Webster's  refutation, 
in  1830,  of  the  doctrines  of  nullification.  He  was  not  only 
acting  with  the  opposition,  which  had  nominated  Mr.  Clay  for 
the  presidency,  but,  at  the  very  beginning  of  that  long  warfare 
respecting  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  which  was  now  about 
to  enter  so  largely  into  the  politics  and  the  legislation  of  the 
country,  his  convictions  respecting  the  utility  and  necessity  of 
such  an  institution  led  him  to  support  the  application  of  the 
existing  bank  for  a  renewal  of  its  charter,  and,  consequently, 
to  encounter  the  hostility  which  General  Jackson  directed 
against  it. 

It  is  quite  unnecessary,  to  any  elucidation  of  Mr.  Webster's 
course  on  this  subject,  to  inquire  who  was  responsible  for  the 
original  antagonism  between  President  Jackson  and  the  bank. 
On  the  one  side,  it  was  charged  that  the  Administration  had 
been  foiled  in  an  attempt  improperly  to  control  the  election  of 


1832.]  CONTROVERSY  RESPECTING  THE  BANK.  415 

a  local  board  of  directors  of  one  of  the  branches  of  the  bank 
for  electioneering  purposes.  On  the  other  side,  it  was  said  that 
the  managers  of  the  bank  had  entered  the  field  of  politics  for 
the  purpose  of  using  it  as  an  instrument  to  defeat  the  reelection 
of  General  Jackson,  and  that  its  application  for  a  renewal  of  its 
charter  at  the  present  session  of  Congress,  more  than  three 
years  before  its  charter  would  expire,  was  designed  to  embarrass 
the  Administration  with  a  question  on  which  its  friends  would 
be  divided,  and  to  throw  that  question  into  the  excitements  of 
the  presidential  election  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  it  operate 
in  favor  of  the  prospects  of  Mr.  Clay.  Into  these  personal  con 
troversies  Mr.  "Webster  did  not  choose  to  enter.  I  have  discov 
ered  no  evidence,  either  4n  public  or  private  sources,  that  he 
advised  an  application  for  the  renewal  of  the  bank  charter  at 
the  present  session ;  but  he  was  undoubtedly  of  opinion  that,  if 
the  bank  was  not  to  be  continued,  the  period  was  not  a  day  too 
long  to  enable  it  to  wind  up  concerns  of  such  vast  magnitude, 
affecting  the  interests  and  business  of  the  whole  country.  He 
told  the  Senate  that  he  desired  to  have  the  question  treated  as  a 
great  public  subject ;  to  have  it  considered  as  statesmen  should 
consider  it,  and  with  as  little  mixture  as  possible  of  all  minor 
motives.  He  reminded  them  of  the  fact  that,  two  years  and  a 
half  previously,  the  President  of  the  United  States  had  called 
the  attention  of  Congress  to  the  subject  of  the  continuance  of 
the  bank;  that  this  invitation  had  been  more  than  once  re 
peated  ;  that  the  subject  had  been  everywhere  discussed,  and 
that  the  public  interest  now  demanded  a  decision  upon  it. 

The  truth  in  respect  to  the  course  of  President  Jackson  on 
this  subject  is  that,  when  the  bill  for  continuing  the  charter  of 
the  bank  was  brought  into  Congress  at  this  session,  it  was  not 
known  that  he  entertained  opinions  hostile  to  the  constitutional 
power  of  Congress  to  create  such  an  institution.  If  he  had  such 
opinions,  they  were  not  known  to  his  own  political  friends  in 
Congress  any  more  than  they  were  to  his  opponents ;  and  there 
was,  therefore,  no  reason,  on  this  or  other  grounds,  to  anticipate 
that  the  bill  would  not  meet  his  official  approval.  Accordingly, 
Mr.  Webster,  in  the  first  speech  which  he  made  on  this  subject, 
on  the  25th  of  May  (1832),  entered  into  no  direct  argument  on 
the  point  of  constitutional  power,  but  confined  himself  almost 


416  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVIII. 

wholly  to  the  expediency  of  renewing  the  charter.  He  did, 
however,  express  an  opinion  on  the  power  of  the  States  to  create 
banks  of  issue,  which  had  an  important  bearing  on  the  duty  of 
Congress  to  regulate  and  control  the  paper  currency  of  the  coun 
try,  by  maintaining  a  bank  capable  of  having  this  effect.  As 
an  original  question,  unaffected  by  the  practice  of  forty  years, 
he  considered  it  very  doubtful  whether  the  States  had  any  con 
stitutional  authority  to  authorize  the  circulation  of  bank  paper. 
The  Constitution  having  conferred  upon  Congress  exclusive 
power  to  provide  and  regulate  the  metallic  currency,  it  was,  in 
Mr.  Webster's  view,  necessary  to  regard  this  power  as  including 
that  of  deciding  how  far  any  other  currency  should  take  its 
place,  or  act  as  its  substitute,  and  what  the  substitute  was  to  be. 
Congress  can  only  do  this  through  the  agency  of  a  bank  estab 
lished  by  its  authority.  Beyond  the  statement  of  this  position, 
and  its  appropriate  illustrations,  he  did  not  enlarge  upon  any  of 
the  constitutional  aspects  of  the  subject,  but  confined  his  argu 
ment  to  the  necessity  and  usefulness  of  the  bank,  treating  the 
question  as  purely  one  of  public,  national,  and  universal  interest, 
and  making  no  allusion  whatever  to  any  of  the  party  topics 
connected,  or  supposed  to  be  connected,  with  it.  The  speech  is 
contained  at  length  in  the  third  volume  of  his  works,  and  is  very 
important. 

Able  and  instructive  as  it  was,  on  all  the  financial  and  pru 
dential  questions  embraced  in  the  question  of  continuing  the 
bank,  it  was  followed,  in  a  few  days,  by  another  speech,  which 
contained  some  very  profound  and  searching  views  respecting 
the  power  of  Congress  to  confer  on  the  States  authority  to  tax 
a  franchise  created  by  Congress  in  the  exercise  of  its  constitu 
tional  powers.  This  topic  came  into  consideration  in  conse 
quence  of  an  amendment  of  the  charter  of  the  bank,  offered  by 
Mr.  Moore,  of  Alabama,  to  authorize  the  States  to  tax  the  offices 
and  branches  of  the  bank,  according  to  the  amount  of  their 
loans  and  issues,  as  other  banks  or  other  property  are  liable  to 
taxation.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  had  decided,  in  reference  to  the  existing 
charter,  that  the  States  could  not  tax  the  bank  or  its  branches ; 
and  it  was  now  proposed  that  this  power  should  be  expressly 
given  to  the  States.  Mr.  Webster  resisted  this  proposition,  not 


1832.]  CONTROVERSY  RESPECTING  THE  BANK.  417 

only  because  it  would  enable  the  States  to  drive  the  bank  out 
of  their  limits,  but  because  he  did  not  admit  that  Congress  has 
the  power  to  confer  upon  a  State  authority  to  tax  a  franchise 
created  by  Congress  for  national  purposes.  His  argument  on 
this  subject,  condensed  into  a  single  sentence,  rested  upon  the 
position  that  the  restraint  against  taxing  a  national  franchise 
is  imposed  upon  the  States  by  the  Constitution,  and  not  by 
any  law  which  Congress  may  enact  ;  that,  as  the  restraint 
does  not  originate  with  Congress,  but  with  a  higher  author 
ity,  viz.,  the  Constitution,  Congress  cannot  dispense  with  or 
remove  it.  On  this  point  he  expressed  himself  with  great 
earnestness,  and  he  succeeded  in  preventing  the  adoption  of 
the  amendment.1 

The  bill  to  continue  the  charter  of  the  bank  passed  both 
Houses  of  Congress  by  decisive  majorities,2  and  was  sent  to  the 
President.  He  returned  it  without  his  signature,  and  with  a 
message  assigning  his  reasons  for  not  approving  it.  This 
"  veto  "  message  for  the  first  time  made  known  to  the  country 
that  General  Jackson  held  the  bank  to  be  unconstitutional; 
and  that  he  held  himself  at  liberty  to  act  upon  this  opinion, 
against  the  whole  current  of  congressional  legislation  on  the 
subject,  and  against  an  express  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States.  It  opened  a  chasm  between  the  Presi- 

1  This  very  striking  argument  appears    vanced  that  the  States  have  no  constitutional 

+A  havp  ni-rpetprl  fhp  attpntimi  nf  ThiVf  power  to  establish  banks  of  circulation,  but 
to  have  arested  the  attention  ot  Uuei- 


Justice   Marshall,  who,  in   acknowledg- 

ment  of  the  receipt  of  Mr.  Webster's 

<?npppVip««    on     flip   hank    wrntp    a<*    fol  quire  the  assent  of  a  State  to  their  introduc- 

.    the   ban*,  wrote    as         .  fton,  or  a  principle  which  might  subject  them 

lows:  to  State  taxation.    This  maybe  considered 

rwnnw  PTTTWW  TTTQTTmj.  iwiwaTTATT  i  not  a8  granting  power  of  taxation  to  a  State, 

[FROM  CHIEF-JUSTICE  MARSHALL.]  fof  ft  gg^  pO8|e^se8  that  power,  but  as  with- 

"  RICHMOND,  June  6,  1832.  drawing  a  bar  which  the  Constitution  opposes 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  thank  you  very  sin-  to  the  exercise  of  this  power  over  a  franchise 

cerely  for  the  copy,  with  which  you  favored  created  by  Congress  for  national  purposes, 

me,  of  your  speeches  on  the  bill  for  renewing  unless  the  constitution  of  the  franchise  in  its 

the  charter  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  creation  has  this  quality  engrafted  on  it.    I, 

I  need  not  say  that  I  consider  an  accommoda-  however,  am  far  from  undertaking  to  dissent 

tion  of  the  tariff  question  itself  as  scarcely  from  your  proposition  ;  I  only  say  it  is  new, 

more  interesting  to  the  country  than  the  pas-  and  I  ponder  on  it. 

sage  of  that  bill.    Your  argument  presents          "With  great  and  respectful  esteem,  I  am 

the  subject  in  its  strongest  point  of  view,  your  obedient  servant, 
and  to  me  seems  unanswerable.   Mr.  Ritchie,  *'J.  MARSHALL. 

in  his  Inquirer,  informs  the  people  of  Vir-          "P.  S.  —  I  only  meant  to  express  my  obli- 

ginia  that  Mr.  Tazewell  has  refuted  you  com-  gation  for  your  attention,  and  I  have  betrayed 

pletely.    This  he  may  have  done,  in  the  opin-  myself  into  the  politics  of  the  day." 
ion  of  Mr.  Ritchie.    I  have  not  seen  Mr.  2  The  vote  in  the  Senate  stood  28  to 

Tazewell'  s  speech,  and  do  not  understand  OA      u^nrl  11  »  ne  wi,0* 

from  the  Inquirer  whether  his  refutation  ap-  20-        We  are  a11  aware  of  what  we  owe 

plies  to  your  speech  in  favor  of  the  bill,  or  to  to  the  admirable  pilotage  which  carried 

that  against  the  amendment  offered  by  Mr.  us  through  the  Senate."  —  (General  T.  Cad- 

Moore.    By  the  way,  your  argument  against  mnunAn?  +n  M*.  WoKator    Tnlv  n    1  sso 

that  amendment  is  founded  in  an  idea  which  walla<*er  to  Mr.  Webster,  July  7,  1832. 

to  me  is  quite  novel.    I  had  often  heard  it  ad-  MS.) 
28 


418  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVIII. 

dent  and  Mr.  "Webster  which,  could  never  be  filled  or  passed ; 
for  the  doctrines  of  the  message  were  diametrically  opposite  to 
all  the  views  respecting  the  powers  of  Congress,  and  respecting 
the  office  of  the  Supreme  Court  as  the  interpreter  of  the  Con 
stitution,  which  Mr.  Webster  had  held  from  his  first  entrance 
into  public  life,  and  which  were  as  inseparable  from  his  public 
character  as  they  were  thoroughly  incorporated  into  all  his  in 
tellectual  habits.  As  he  had  taken  the  leading  part  in  conduct 
ing  the  bill  through  the  Senate,  it  appeared  to  devolve  on  him 
to  examine  the  grounds  of  the  veto  message.  There  was  little 
probability  that  the  bill  could  obtain  the  requisite  constitutional 
vote  of  two-thirds  of  the  members  of  each  House,  in  order  to 
make  it  a  law  notwithstanding  the  objections  of  the  President. 
But  the  doctrines  of  the  message  could  not  be  passed  by  in 
silence. 

The  speech  which  Mr.  "Webster  delivered  on  these  doctrines, 
upon  the  llth  of  July  (1832),  was  grave,  and  as  courteous  tow 
ard  the  President  as  could  be  demanded,  but  it  was  exceedingly 
plain  and  emphatic.  It  was  not  answered  then,  nor  has  it  ever 
been  answered  since.  The  position  taken  by  the  President,  that 
every  official,  who  takes  an  oath  to  support  the  Constitution, 
swears  to  support  it  "  as  he  understands  it,"  and  that,  if  he  un 
derstands  it  differently  from  the  construction  that  has  been 
given  to  it  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  he  is  at 
liberty,  in  his  official  action,  to  follow  out  his  own  convictions,1 
was,  it  is  right  to  say,  refuted  by  Mr.  "Webster.  It  has  never 
commended  itself  to  the  sound  judgment  of  the  most  enlightened 
portion  of  the  nation,  of  any  party ;  and,  although  it  has  been 
occasionally  reasserted  by  public  men,  in  justification  of  par 
ticular  acts,  it  has  never  been  successfully  defended.  In  the 
excitement  of  the  time,  the  party  that  followed  General  Jack- 

1   The  following  is  the  position  of  when  it  may  be  brought  before  them  for 

President  Jackson's  celebrated  "  veto "  judicial  decision.      The  opinion  of  the 

message :  "  Each  public  officer,  who  takes  judges  has  no  more  authority  over  Con- 

an    oath   to   support  the   Constitution,  gress  than  the  opinion  of  Congress  has 

swears  to  support  it  as  he  understands  over  the  judges ;  and  on  that  point  the 

it,  and  not  as  it  is  understood  by  others.  President  is  independent  of  both.     The 

It  is  as  much  the  duty  of  the  House  of  authority  of  the  Supreme  Court  must  not, 

Representatives,  of  the  Senate,  and  of  the  therefore,  be  permitted  to  control  the 

President,  to  decide  upon  the  constitu-  Congress,  or  the  Executive,  when  acting 

tionality  of  any  bill  or  resolution  which  in  their  legislative  capacities,  but  to  have 

may  be  presented  to  them  for  passage  or  only  such  influence  as  the  force  of  their 

approval,  as  it  is  of  the  supreme  judges,  reasoning  may  deserve." 


1832.]  CONTROVERSY  RESPECTING  THE  BANK.  419 

son  yielded  their  assent  to  this  doctrine,  because  it  was  advanced 
~by  him ;  but  it  did  not  become  a  permanent  dogma  in  their 
political  creed,  and  it  will  never  attain  that  rank  in  the  opin 
ions  of  any  party  that  means  to  give  a  just  effect  and  operation 
to  the  provisions  of  the  Constitution. 

In  order  to  a  correct  understanding  of  the  grounds  of  Mr. 
Webster's  denial  of  the  President's  position,  it  is  proper  to  ex 
plain  the  precise  situation  to  which  the  President  applied  the 
claim  of  the  Executive  to  judge  of  the  constitutional  validity  of 
laws  presented  for  his  approval.  The  existing  charter  of  the 
bank  had  been  pronounced  by  the  Supreme  Court  to  be  a  valid 
law,  duly  enacted  under  the  Constitution.  It  was,  therefore,  a 
statute,  in  force  as  the  law  of  the  land,  when  a  bill  was  sent  to 
the  President  to  continue  it  for  a  further  term  of  years  beyond 
its  existing  limitation.  The  President  refused  to  sign  this  bill, 
upon  the  ground  that  the  original  charter  was  unconstitutional. 
A  large  part  of  the  message  was  taken  up  with  an  argument  to 
refute  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  affirming  the  con 
stitutional  validity  of  a  law  now  in  operation.  The  claim  of 
the  President  thus  came  to  be,  that  the  Executive,  when  called 
upon  in  his  legislative  capacity  to  sign  a  bill  continuing  a  law 
that  has  been  pronounced  constitutional  by  the  Supreme  Court, 
is  at  liberty  to  deny  that  it  is,  or  was,  a  valid  law,  and  there 
fore  ought  not  to  be  continued.  Taken  in  connection  with  the 
language  of  the  message,  and  its  broad  position  respecting  the 
meaning  of  the  oath  to  support  the  Constitution,  this  doctrine 
was  regarded  by  Mr.  Webster  as  disorganizing  and  revolution 
ary  ;  for  it  could  be  extended  to  the  execution  of  laws,  just  as 
readily  as  to  their  reenactment  or  continuance,  and  would  leave 
every  public  officer  to  judge  what  laws  he  would  carry  into 
effect. 

Mr.  Webster  never  denied  that  the  President,  when  called 
upon  to  decide  whether  a  law  is  to  le  enacted,  may  apply  his 
own  judgment  to  the  question  whether  it  is  within  the  scope 
of  the  Constitution,  although  all  other  branches  of  the  Govern 
ment  have  repeatedly  decided  that  similar  laws  are  constitu 
tional.  He  did,  indeed,  always  hold  that  decisions  of  the 
Supreme  Court  have  a  greater  force,  in  concluding  questions  of 
constitutional  power,  than  is  accorded  to  them  by  simply  weigh- 


420  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVIII. 

ing  their  reasoning.  In  his  view,  the  Supreme  Court  was 
created  for  the  express  purpose  of  acting  as  the  official  inter 
preter  of  the  Constitution ;  yet  he  did  not  deny  that,  when  a 
law  is  proposed  to  be  enacted,  all  who  are  to  perform  a  part  in 
that  enactment  must  judge  of  its  constitutional  validity,  for  the 
purpose  of  governing  their  legislative  action.  But  this  was  not 
the  limit  to  which  the  President  confined  himself.  He  claimed 
the  right  to  say  that  an  existing  law,  pronounced  constitution 
ally  valid  by  the  Supreme  Court,  was  constitutionally  invalid, 
and  for  this  reason  to  refuse  to  sign  a  bill  continuing  it  in  force. 
He,  or  the  writer  of  the  message,  failed  to  see  that  there  is  a 
clear  distinction  between  such  a  case  and  a  case  where  the 
President  is  called  upon,  in  his  legislative  capacity,  not  to  con 
tinue  a  law  that  has  been  expressly  pronounced  constitutional 
by  the  Supreme  Court,  but  to  act  upon  a  law  on  the  same  sub 
ject  that  has  not  itself  been  submitted  to  the  adjudication  of 
that  tribunal.  Overlooking  this  distinction,  the  message  took 
an  extreme  and  untenable  ground,  which  makes  the  official 
oath  to  support  the  Constitution  nothing  but  a  declaration 
that  it  is  to  be  supported  as  the  person  taking  the  oath 
understands  it,  in  respect  both  to  laws  that  have  been 
enacted  and  have  been  directly  adjudicated  as  constitutional 
by  the  Supreme  Court,  and  in  respect  to  laws  that  are  to 
be  enacted  and  have  not  been  subjected  to  that  judicial  re 
vision. 

Such,  in  substance,  was  the  commencement  of  the  famous 
controversy  between  President  Jackson  and  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States — a  controversy  that  was  destined  to  agitate  the 
country  for  many  years.  Mr.  Webster's  early  relation  to  it  was 
limited  to  what  I  have  now  described.  From  convictions  of 
public  duty,  he  carried  the  bill,  to  recharter  the  bank,  through 
the  Senate.  From  convictions  of  what  he  owed  to  the  Consti 
tution  and  its  just  interpretation,  he  resisted  the  doctrines  of 
the  "veto"  message.  Time  has  made  all  that  was  personal 
or  merely  political  in  these  controversies  of  very  little  im 
portance.  But  it  has  not  seen  the  powers  of  Congress  to 
create  banking  institutions,  as  those  powers  were  maintained 
by  Mr.  "Webster,  finally  abandoned  or  renounced  by  the  na 
tion  ;  nor  has  it  seen  a  national  sanction  given  to  the  doc- 


1832.]  REJECTION  CF  MR.  VAN   BUREN.  421 

trine  that  the  constitutional  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  are  not  binding  upon  the  other  depart 
ments  of  the  Government,  in  respect  to  the  matters  which 
they  decide. 

On  the  20th  of  July,  1829,  Mr.  Yan  Buren,  Secretary  of 
State  in  General  Jackson's  first  Cabinet,  gave  instructions  to 
Mr.  McLane,  then  going  to  the  court  of  England  as  minister  of 
the  United  States,  on  the  subject  of  colonial  trade.  By  the  con 
vention  of  1815,  reciprocity  of  intercourse  was  established  be 
tween  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain,  but  this  arrangement 
was  not  extended  to  the  British  "West  Indies.  The  result  was  the 
passage  of  various  discriminating  and  retaliatory  acts  on  both 
sides.  At  length,  in  1825,  the  English  Parliament  passed  an 
act,  offering  reciprocity  in  the  West  India  trade,  so  far  as  the 
mere  carrying-trade  was  concerned,  to  all  nations  that  might 
accept  the  offer  within  one  year.  The  Administration  of  Mr. 
John  Quincy  Adams  did  not  avail  itself  of  this  offer,  preferring 
to  accomplish  by  treaty  the  free  admission  of  our  products  into 
the  British  islands  for  consumption,  and  not  regarding  the 
admission  of  our  vessels  as  an  object  that  ought  to  be  severed 
from  that  of  our  productions.  This  purpose  had  not  been 
accomplished  when  Mr.  Adams  went  out  of  office,  and  the 
direct  trade  between  the  United  States  and  the  British  West 
Indies  remained  closed  in  consequence  of  the  mutually  re 
taliatory  legislation.  Mr.  McLane  was  instructed  by  Mr.  Yan 
Buren  to  reopen  this  subject,  and  in  these  instructions  the 
Secretary  said : 

"  The  opportunities  which  you  have  derived  from  a  participation  in 
our  public  counsels,  as  well  as  other  sources  of  information,  will  enable  you 
to  speak  with  confidence  (as  far  as  you  may  deem  it  proper  and  useful  so 
to  do)  of  the  respective  parts  taken  by  those  to  whom  the  administration 
of  this  Government  is  now  committed,  in  relation  to  the  course  heretofore 
pursued  upon  the  subject  of  the  colonial  trade.  Their  views  upon  that 
point  have  been  submitted  to  the  people  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
counsels  by  which  your  conduct  is  now  directed  are  the  result  of  the 
judgment  expressed  by  the  only  earthly  tribunal  to  which  the  late  Admin 
istration  was  amenable  for  its  acts.  It  should  be  sufficient  that  the  claims 
set  up  by  them,  and  which  caused  the  interruption  of  the  trade  in  ques 
tion,  have  been  explicitly  abandoned  by  those  who  first  asserted  them,  and 
are  not  revived  by  their  successors.  If  Great  Britain  deems  it  adverse  to 


422  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVIII. 

her  interests  to  allow  us  to  participate  in  the  trade  with  her  colonies, 
and  finds  nothing  in  the  extension  of  it  to  others  to  induce  her  to 
apply  the  same  rule  to  us,  she  will,  we  hope,  be  sensible  of  the  pro 
priety  of  placing  her  refusal  on  those  grounds.  To  set  up  the  acts  of 
the  late  Administrations  as  the  cause  of  forfeiture  of  privileges  which 
would  otherwise  be  extended  to  the  people  of  the  United  States,  would, 
under  existing  circumstances,  be  unjust  in  itself,  and  could  not  fail  to 
excite  their  deepest  sensibility.  The  tone  of  feeling  which  a  course  so 
unwise  and  so  untenable  is  calculated  to  produce  would,  doubtless,  be 
greatly  aggravated  by  the  consciousness  that  Great  Britain  has,  by  order 
in  council,  opened  her  colonial  ports  to  Russia  and  France,  notwith 
standing  a  similar  omission  on  their  part  to  accept  the  terms  offered 
by  the  act  of  July,  1825.  You  cannot  press  this  view  of  the  subject 
too  earnestly  upon  the  consideration  of  the  British  ministry.  It  has  bear 
ings  and  relations  which  reach  beyond  the  immediate  question  under 
discussion. 

"  I  will  add  nothing  as  to  the  impropriety  of  suffering  any  feelings, 
that  find  their  origin  in  the  past  pretensions  of  this  Government,  to  have 
an  adverse  influence  upon  the  present  conduct  of  Great  Britain." 

On  the  dissolution  of  General  Jackson's  first  Cabinet,  Mr. 
Yan  Buren  was  appointed  by  the  President  as  minister  to 
Great  Britain.  He  had  gone  abroad,  and  been  accredited  by 
the  government  to  which  he  was  sent,  before  his  nomination 
could  be  acted  upon  by  the  Senate.  The  instructions  which  he 
had  given  to  Mr.  McLane  were  regarded  by  the  whole  opposi 
tion  as  an  appeal  to  the  favor  of  the  British  Government, 
grounded  upon  reflections  on  the  past  conduct  of  the  preceding 
Administration  in  a  matter  of  foreign  intercourse,  and  convey 
ing  intimations  that  those  now  in  power  in  this  country  did  not 
intend  to  assert  pretensions  which  had  by  their  assertion  de 
prived  us  of  privileges  accorded  to  other  nations.  For  these 
reasons,  Mr.  Yan  Buren's  nomination  was  rejected  by  the  Sen 
ate.  The  part  taken  by  Mr.  "Webster  in  this  rejection  may  be 
fully  understood  by  examining  his  remarks  explanatory  of  the 
vote  he  intended  to  give.1  He  placed  that  vote  entirely  upon 
the  party  tone  and  character  which  he  found  in  the  instruc 
tions  given  by  Mr.  Yan  Buren,  as  Secretary  of  State,  to  Mr. 
McLane,  in  reference  to  a  claim  advanced  by  our  Govern 
ment  in  diplomatic  intercourse.  Speaking  of  Mr.  Yan  Buren's 
letter,  he  said : 

1  Works,  Hi.,  357,  et  seq. 


1832.]  REJECTION  OF  MR.  VAN   BUREN.  423 

"  Sir,  I  submit  to  you,  and  to  the  candor  of  all  just  men,  if  I  am  not 
right  in  saying  that  the  pervading  topic  through  the  whole  is,  not  Amer 
ican  rights,  not  American  interests,  not  American  defence,  but  denunciation 
of  past  pretensions  of  our  Government,  reflections  on  the  past  Administra 
tion,  and  exultation  and  a  loud  claim  of  merit  for  the  Administration  now 
in  power.  Sir,  I  would  forgive  mistakes ;  I  would  pardon  the  want  of 
information  ;  I  would  pardon  almost  any  thing  where  I  saw  true  patriotism 
and  sound  American  feeling;  but  I  cannot  forgive  the  sacrifice  of  this 
feeling  to  mere  party.  I  cannot  concur  in  sending  abroad  a  public  agent 
who  has  not  conceptions  so  large  and  liberal  as  to  feel  that,  in  the  presence 
of  foreign  courts,  amidst  the  monarchies  of  Europe,  he  is  to  stand  up  for 
his  country,  and  his  whole  country ;  that  no  jot  nor  tittle  of  her  honor 
is  to  suffer  in  his  hands ;  that  he  is  not  to  allow  others  to  reproach  either 
his  Government  or  his  country,  and  far  less  is  he  himself  to  reproach 
either;  that  he  is  to  have  no  objects  in  his  eye  but  American  objects, 
and  no  heart  in  his  bosom  but  an  American  heart;  and  that  he  is  to 
forget  self,  and  forget  party,  to  forget  every  sinister  and  narrow  feel 
ing,  in  his  proud  and  lofty  attachment  to  the  republic  whose  commission 
he  bears. 

"  Mr.  President,  I  have  discharged  an  exceedingly  unpleasant  duty,  the 
most  unpleasant  of  my  public  life.  But  I  have  looked  upon  it  as  a  duty, 
and  it  was  not  to  be  shunned.  And,  sir,  however  unimportant  may  be  the 
opinion  of  so  humble  an  individual  as  myself,  I  now  only  wish  that  I 
might  be  heard  »by  every  independent  freeman  in  the  United  States, 
by  the  British  ministry  and  the  British  king,  and  by  every  minister 
and  every  crowned  head  in  Europe,  while,  standing  here  in  my  place, 
I  pronounce  my  rebuke,  as  solemnly  and  as  decisively  as  I  can,  upon 
this  first  instance  in  which  an  American  minister  has  been  sent  abroad 
as  the  representative  of  his  party,  and  not  as  the  representative  of  his 
country." 

It  has  often  been  said  that  this  rejection  of  Mr.  Yan  Buren 
was  a  political  mistake  on  the  part  of  the  opposition;  and 
doubtless  it  was  made  afterward  to  contribute  to  his  subsequent 
elevation  to  the  presidency.  But  Mr.  Webster's  participation 
in  it  is  to  be  judged,  not  by  the  lower  standard  of  political  ex 
pediency,  in  reference  to  which  the  rejection  may  have  been  a 
political  error,  but  by  the  higher  standard  of  public  propriety, 
in  reference  to  which  Mr.  Yan  Buren's  letter  to  Mr.  McLane 
was  clearly  open  to  the  complaints  that  were  made  of  it.  Mr. 
"Webster  was,  of  course,  aware  that,  by  voting  against  the  nomi 
nation  of  Mr.  Yan  Buren,  he  might  give  to  a  political  opponent 
the  benefit  of  a  grievance.  But  he  considered  the  preservation 
of  an  elevated  and  national  tone  in  our  diplomacy  to  be  a  thing 


424 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[OH.  XVIII. 


of  too  much  consequence  to  allow  him  to  avoid  a  disagreeable 
duty.  Whatever  may  be  the  opinion  with  which  the  criti 
cisms  upon  Mr.  Yan  Buren's  course  are  now  viewed,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  this  occurrence  has  had  an  impor 
tant  influence  in  restraining  the  introduction  of  party  dif 
ferences  into  the  diplomatic  relations  of  our  Government 
with  foreign  powers,  and  that  it  has  taught  other  Secreta 
ries  to  remember  that  they  represent  the  nation  and  not 
the  parties  or  factions  into  which  it  may  be  at  any  time 
divided.1 


1  Among  the  forgotten  topics  of  this 
affair  was  the  origin  of  what  Mr.  Van 
Buren  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  McLane  called 
"  the  past  pretensions  of  this  Govern 
ment."  This  related  to  the  claim  for  a 
free  reciprocity  in  the  colonial  trade ;  a 
claim  which  had  been,  in  fact,  advanced 
by  Mr.  Monroe's  Administration.  One 
of  the  objects  of  the  law  passed  by  Con 
gress,  in  1823,  was  to  prevent  Great 
Britain  from  availing  herself  of  our  pro 
ductions  sent  circuitously  through  her 
colonial  ports.  For  this  purpose,  the 
third  section  of  that  law  enacted  that,  on 
proof  being  given  to  the  President  that 
goods  imported  in  the  British  colonial 
ports  in  American  vessels  were  subjected 
to  no  other  duties  than  the  like  goods 
imported  into  the  same  ports  "  from  else 
where,"  the  President  might,  by  proc 
lamation,  establish  the  same  privilege 
for  British  colonial  importations  into  our 
ports.  In  the  discussion  on  Mr.  Van 
Buren's  nomination,  it  was  said  that  the 
effect  of  this  provision  was  not  under 
stood,  at  the  time  of  its  passage,  as 
demanding  a  free  reciprocity.  Mr. 
Van  Buren  was  a  member  of  the  Sen 
ate  when  the  act  of  1823  was  passed. 
To  clear  up  this  point,  Mr.  Webster 
wrote  to  Mr.  Barbour  the  following 
letter,  and  received  the  subjoined  an 
swer  : 

"  WASHINGTON,  February  8, 1832. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIB  :  I  send  you  a  newspaper, 
containing  the  remarks  of  General  Smith,  in 
the  Senate,  on  Mr.  Van  Buren's  nomination, 
for  the  purpose  of  drawing  your  attention  to 
that  part  of  them  in  which  he  speaks  of  the 
act  of  March  1,1823. 

"He  seems  to  think,  as  you  will  perceive, 
that  the  important  provision,  respecting 
equality  of  duties,  contained  in  that  act, 
passed  unnoticed  by  any  one.  Such  a  thing 
is,  of  course,  exceedingly  improbable,  since 
it  is  the  main  provision  in  a  principal  section 
of  the  act.  I  am  told,  too,  by  those  who  were 


here  at  the  time,  that  not  only  was  this  pro 
vision  perfectly  well  understood  in  Congress, 
but  that  it  attracted  the  notice  of  persons  not 
in  Congress ;  and  that,  as  soon  as  the  bill  was 
printed  and  published,  and  while  yet  on  its 
passage,  the  British  minister  suggested  to  the 
Department  of  State  his  views  of  it. 

"  I  have  looked  for  the  debate  in  the  Sen 
ate  on  this  bill.  All  I  have  been  able  to  find 
is  in  the  National  Intelligencer  of  the  26th  or 
27th  of  February,  if  I  rightly  remember  the 
day.  It  is  there  stated  that  the  bill  was  in 
troduced  by  you,  as  Chairman  of  the  Commit 
tee  of  Foreign  Kelations,  and  its  principles 
and  provisions  explained;  and  that  Messrs. 
Smith,  Lloyd,  etc.,  took  part  in  the  discussion 
of  its  details.  My  object  now  is,  to  inquire 
whether  you  are  able  to  recollect  what  oc 
curred  in  the  Senate  respecting  this  provision 
of  the  third  section  of  the  bill ;  and  whether 
that  third  section,  with  the  word  '  elsewhere,' 
and  all  its  other  words,  was  explained  by  you, 
and  its  object  stated,  in  your  general  speech 
on  introducing  the  bill  ? 

"  You  will  see  that  one  of  the  gentlemen's 
remarks  would  seem  to  imply  that  /  was 
present  at  the  passage  of  the  bill,  and  was 
silent.  In  this,  as  well  as  in  other  particu 
lars,  it  would  have  been  better,  perhaps,  if 
the  worthy  member  had  been  a  little  more 
distrustful  of  his  own  memory.  I  was  not  a 
member  of  either  House  of  Congress  when  the 
bill  passed. 

"  I  pray  you  to  accept,  my  dear  sir,  assur 
ances  of  my  cordial  regards. 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

"  Hon.  James  Barbour, 

"Barboursville, 
"Orange  Co.,  Va." 

[TO  MR.  WEBSTER.] 

BALTIMORE,  February  17,  1832. 

"DEAR  SIR:  Your  letter  of  the  8th  in 
stant  was  received  by  me  just  as  I  was 
setting  out  for  this  place  to  visit  my  fam 
ily.  I  avail  myself  of  the  first  moment 
which  circumstances  afford  to  furnish  my 
reply. 

"Although  I  am  aware  that  one  should 
speak  with  diffidence  of  events  long  past,  of 
which  there  is  no  memorial  but  a  frail  mem 
ory,  still,  from  my  peculiar  relation  to  the 
subject-matter  of  your  inquiry,  I  think  I  can 
speak  with  some  degree  of  confidence  as  to 
the  facts  regarding  which  you  ask  for  infor 
mation.  You  are  aware  that,  immediately 
after  the  war,  the  United  States  determined 


1832.] 


APPORTIONMENT   OF  REPRESENTATIVES. 


425 


A  great  deal  of  attention  was  given  by  Mr.  Webster  at  this 
session  to  the  subject  of  the  apportionment  of  representatives  to 
the  several  States.  By  the  rule  hitherto  followed,  and  now 
proposed  to  be  repeated  under  the  census  of  1830,  by  a  bill 
which  came  from  the  House,  a  ratio  was  adopted,  giving  one 
representative  for  a  fixed  number  of  persons.  This  representa 
tive  ratio  was  proposed  by  the  present  bill  to  be  forty-seven 
thousand  seven  hundred.  The  application  of  the  ratio  to  the 
several  States  left  much  larger  unrepresented  fractions,  or 
residuary  numbers,  to  some  of  the  smaller  States  than  it  left 


to  adopt  perfect  reciprocity  as  a  fundamental 
principle  of  its  commercial  intercourse  with 
all  nations— that  while  Great  Britain  had 
reluctantly  yielded  to  this  principle  in  our 
intercourse  with  her  European  possessions, 
she  pertinaciously  refused  it  in  our  trade  with 
the  West  India  colonies,  and  her  efforts  were 
incessant  to  mould  the  intercourse  to  her 
peculiar  advantage.  It  is  also  known  to  you 
that  our  minister  at  London  at  that  time  con 
tinually  impressed  on  the  American  Govern 
ment  that,  so  long  as  we  permitted,  without 
resistance,  a  course  of  things  to  be  pursued 
BO  injurious  to  us  and  so  beneficial  to  Great 
Britain,  remonstrance  would  be  in  vain.  Our 
remedy  was  to  be  found  only  in  a  vigorous 
countervailing  policy.  I  happen  to  know 
that  this  was  the  opinion  of  both  Mr.  Madison 
and  Mr.  Monroe.  Hence  the  commencement 
of  the  war  of  regulations  between  the  two 
powers — a  policy  which  was  then,  I  may  say, 
universally  approved  of,  judging  by  the  votes 
in  both  Houses  on  the  bill  which  was  first 
enacted  on  the  subject ;  and  it  was  also  be 
lieved  in  the  sequel  that  to  this  course  was  to 
be  ascribed  the  relaxation,  on  the  part  of 
Great  Britain,  of  her  exclusive  pretensions. 
Eventually,  in  the  session,  '22-3,  the  progress 
of  affairs  called  for  a  new  enactment.  At  that 
time  it  was  my  lot  to  be  the  Chairman  of  the 
Committee  of  the  Senate  on  Foreign  Kela- 
tions.  The  bill  as  it  passed,  I  believe,  was 
furnished  by  the  Administration.  When  it 
was  presented  to  the  committee,  our  attention 
was  drawn  to  these  same  notorious  words 
'from  elsewhere;'  we  understood  them  in 
the  sense  which  has  ever  been  ascribed  to 
them.  I  was  directed,  however,  by  the  com 
mittee  to  have  an  interview  with  the  Secre 
tary  of  State,  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining 
if  our  interpretation  of  these  words  was  the 
one  designed,  and  also  to  obtain  all  the  infor 
mation  in  the  possession  of  the  Administra 
tion,  and  its  views  on  the  whole  matter.  I 
obeyed  their  instructions  by  calling  on  Mr. 
Adams,  and  communicating  the  wishes  of  the 
committee.  He  went  fully  into  the  matter. 
First,  by  stating  that  the  policy  on  which  the 
bill  was  formed  was  the  result  of  the  deliber 
ate  consideration  of  the  whole  Cabinet,  and 
had  its  unanimous  approbation.  He  pro 
ceeded  to  develop  the  reasons  which  had 
brought  them  to  that  result.  These,  it  is  un 
necessary  to  state.  It  may  be  proper,  how 
ever,  to  refer  to  one  of  them  as  connected 
with  the  more  particular  object  of  your  in 
quiry.  Were  the  words,  said  he,  '  from  else 
where,1  stricken  out,  it  would  leave  to  Great 


Britain  the  power  of  fixing  such  high  dis 
criminating  duties  in  favor  of  the  products 
of  her  continental  colonies  that  similar  prod 
ucts  of  the  United  States,  it  was  to  be  feared, 
would  be  sent  to  the  ports  of  these  colonies, 
to  profit  by  a  fictitious  naturalization  so  as  to 
be  relieved  from  the  burden  of  the  alien  duty, 
and  from  thence  to  be  transported  in  British 
bottoms  to  the  places  of  consumption,  and 
thereby  Great  Britain  would  monopolize  the 
whole  of  the  navigation  between  the  conti 
nent  and  her  islands  to  our  entire  exclusion. 
Mr.  Adams  closed  his  remarks  by  saying  he 
would  ask  the  President  to  bring  the  subject 
again  under  the  consideration  of  the  Cabinet, 
and  that,  if  in  two  or  three  days  I  would  call 
again,  he  would  inform  me  of  the  result  of 
their  deliberations.  I  did  so,  and  he  informed 
me  that  they  were  unanimous  in  advising  the 
adoption  of  the  measure,  and  in  particular 
the  words  '  from  elsewhere.'  The  committee 
was  convened  again,  and  I  communicated  all 
the  information  I  had  obtained.  As  well  as 
I  recollect,  they  unanimously  recommended 
reporting  the  bill.  I  think  I  cannot  be  mis 
taken  in  saying  that  Mr.  Eufus  King  was  a 
member  of  the  committee.  When  we  reflect 
on  his  very  extensive  capacity,  and  his  inti 
mate  and  profound  knowledge  of  our  com 
mercial  affairs,  to  say  nothing  of  other  most 
respectable  members  of  the  committee,  it 
furnishes  a  very  satisfactory  assurance  that 
BO  important  a  measure  could  not  have  passed 
without  a  due  consideration  and  a  perfect  un 
derstanding  of  the  subject.  It  devolved  on 
me,  from  my  relation  to  the  committee,  to 
present  to  the  Senate  the  whole  subject,  and 
all  the  information  which  the  committee  had 
obtained — that  duty  I  discharged.  I  am, 
therefore,  at  a  loss  to  conjecture  on  what 
ground  the  assertion,  that  it  was  little  under 
stood,  is  to  rest;  and  I  heard  with  surprise 
that  a  deliberate  enactment  of  the  United 
States  of  America  in  Congress  assembled  was 
stigmatized  as  a  silly  pretension.  Although 
I  cannot  speak  from  my  own  knowledge  of 
the  course  of  the  British  minister  in  re 
gard  to  the  measure  during  its  pendency  in 
Congress,  yet,  I  believe,  from  my;  recollec 
tions,  that  he  did  express  his  opinions  on 

"I  hope  to  be  in  Washington  on  next 
Monday,  when  I  promise  myself  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  my  friends,  among  whom  I  take 
great  pleasure  in  permitting  myself  to  believe 
I  may  rank  you. 

"  I  offer  you  my  respects. 

"JAMES  BARBOUR." 


426  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XVIII. 

to  the  larger  ones ;  and,  as  the  process  produced  a  House  of 
two  hundred  and  forty  members,  the  assignment  of  members 
made  by  the  bill  to  the  several  States  gave  to  New  York,  for  ex 
ample,  forty  members,  while  she  was  entitled,  out  of  the  whole 
mass  presented  by  the  number  two  hundred  and  forty,  accord 
ing  to  her  population,  to  but  thirty-eight.  Forty  members  for 
the  State  of  ]STew  York  gave  her  eight  times  as  many  mem 
bers  as  the  process  assigned  to  Yermont,  although  her  popula 
tion  was  not  eight  times  that  of  Yermont  by  more  than  three 
hundred  thousand.  These  and  many  other  glaring  inequalities, 
operating  throughout  the  Union,  led  Mr.  Webster  to  make  a 
very  careful  examination  of  the  whole  subject,  in  order  to  dis 
cover  a  rule  that  would  better  effect  the  purpose  of  the  Consti 
tution.  The  mandate  of  the  Constitution  required  representa 
tives  and  direct  taxes  to  be  apportioned  among  the  several 
States  according  to  their  respective  numbers,  but  limited  the 
number  of  representatives  to  not  more  than  one  for  every  thirty 
thousand,  and  allowing,  however,  at  least  one  member  to  every 
State,  although  its  representative  population  might  fall  short 
of  thirty  thousand.  But  the  Constitution  prescribed  no  pro 
cess  by  which  its  mandate  was  to  be  carried  out.  Mr.  Webster 
considered  that  the  true  course  was,  to  regard  the  Constitution 
as  directing  an  equality  of  representation  between  the  States, 
as  near  as  may  fo,  since  absolute  equality  is  impracticable.  He 
embodied  his  views  in  an  elaborate  report,  which  he  made  to 
the  Senate  on  the  5th  of  April.  It  is  contained  in  the  third 
volume  of  his  works.1  Its  principles  were  not  adopted  by  Con 
gress  at  that  time,  but  they  were  carried  out  under  the  census 
of  1850. 

His  principal  object  in  this  report,  and  in  the  amendment 
which  he  proposed  to  the  bill  as  it  came  from  the  House,  was 
to  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  the  Constitution  requires  or  author 
izes  Congress,  in  apportioning  the  representation  of  the  States, 
to  adopt  a  fixed  integer  or  any  common  number  of  constitu 
ents  for  every  member  of  the  House.  Such  a  process  neces 
sarily  results  in  fractions  or  residuary  numbers,  and  renders 
it  exceedingly  difficult,  and  sometimes  impracticable,  to  at 
tain  that  approximate  equality  which  the  Constitution  con- 

1  Works,  iii.,  369. 


1832.]  PURCHASE  OF  THE  MARSHFIELD  ESTATE.  427 

templates.     On  this  subject  lie  received  tlie  concurrence  of 
Chancellor  Kent,  expressed  in  the  following  letter  : 


[FROM  CHANCELLOR  KENT.] 

"  NEW  YOEK,  April  21, 1832. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  perused  the  report  you  made  to  the  Senate,  and 
sent  me,  on  the  apportionment  of  representatives.  Its  clear  and  severe 
logical  reasoning  has  struck  me  forcibly.  I  am  not  a  mathematician,  and 
not  well  versed  in  the  application  of  divisors.  I  have  looked  at  the  Con 
stitution  and  your  argument  again  and  again,  and  I  see  nothing  unconsti 
tutional,  but  great  justice  and  reason  in  your  amendment,  and  the  prin 
ciple  on  which  it  is  founded,  that  Congress  are  bound  to  apportion  among 
the  States  according  to  numbers  as  near  as  may  ~be.  Perfect  equality  is 
impracticable,  and  the  allowance  of  a  representative  to  fractions  exceeding 
a  moiety  of  the  ratio  would  seem  to  me  to  make  the  best  approximation ; 
and  that  the  results  and  irregularities  in  the  bill,  as  it  came  from  the  other 
House,  were  unjust  and  intolerable.  So  it  strikes  me ;  and  I  see  no  infrac 
tion  of  any  rule  in  the  Constitution,  but  a  conformity  to  its  spirit  and 
equity  (which  is  equality),  in  the  amendment. 

"JAS.  KENT. 

"Hon.  D.Webster. 

"  Be  so  good  as  to  send  me  one  copy  out  of  the  Jive  thousand,  copies  of 
Mr.  Clay's  land  papers." 

In  the  course  of  this  year  Mr.  Webster  became  the  owner 
of  the  estate  at  Marshfield,  which  I  have  already  said  was  the 
place  of  his  summer  residence  after  1824.  As  Captain  Thomas 
approached  the  age  of  seventy,  the  care  of  his  farm  became 
irksome  to  him.  His  means  were  not  large,  and  it  was  thought 
best  for  his  children  that  he  should  sell  this  property.  Mr.  Web 
ster  purchased  it  in  the  autumn  of  1831,  but  the  deed  was  not 
taken  until  April,  1832.  Nor  would  Mr.  Webster  then  consent 
that  Captain  Thomas  should  leave  the  house.  The  old  gentle 
man  continued,  in  fact,  to  live  there  until  his  death,  which 
occurred  on  the  27th  of  July,  1837,  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
three.  While  he  lived,  Mr.  Webster  continually  spoke  of  the 
affairs  of  the  farm  as  if  it  were  still  the  property  of  its  former 
owner ;  saying,  "  Captain  Thomas  has  this,"  or  "  Captain 
Thomas  is  going  to  do  that,"  while  it  was  Mr.  Webster  who 
ordered,  and  Mr.  Webster  who  paid ;  for  the  fees  of  the  great 
lawyer  went  lavishly  into  extensive  plantations,  noble  barns, 


428  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XVIII. 

and  many  other  improvements.  But  the  family  of  Captain 
Thomas  did  not  continue  to  reside  there  as  the  result  of  any 
bargain.  It  was  simply  Mr.  Webster's  wish  that  they  should 
remain.  "  Captain  Thomas  and  Mrs.  Thomas,"  he  used  to  say, 
"  are  a  part  of  Marshfield,  and  it  can  never  be  the  same  with 
out  them."  Hereafter  we  shall  see  this  feeling  extending  itself 
to  their  children. 


1832.]  NULLIFICATION.  429 


CHAPTER   XIX. 
1832-1833. 

NULLIFICATION CONDUCT  OF  SOUTH  CAROLINA SPEECH  AT  WOR 
CESTER  IN  OCTOBER,  1832 — REELECTION  OF  GENERAL  JACKSON 

MR.  CALHOUN'S  POSITION — THE  PRESIDENT'S  PROCLAMATION — 
MR.  CLAY'S  COMPROMISE  BILL — THE  FORCE  BILL — MR.  WEB 
STER'S  VIEWS  OF  THE  PROPER  COURSE  TO  BE  PURSUED 

DEBATE  WITH  MR.  CALHOUN  ON  THE  NATURE  OF  THE  GOV- 


MK.  "WEBSTER  was  well  advised,  when,  at  the  dinner  given 
to  him  in  New  York,  in  March,  1831,  he  intimated  that 
the  crisis  of  nullification  was  not  wholly  passed  by.  Congress 
met  in  December,  1831,  and  adjourned  in  March,  1832,  without 
surrendering  the  policy  of  protection,  and  without  renouncing 
the  constitutional  power  to  lay  duties  of  discrimination  for  the 
purpose  of  fostering  American  manufactures.  Notwithstanding 
the  general  acceptance  of  the  views  maintained  by  Mr.  Webster 
in  the  debate  of  1830,  concerning  the  nature  of  the  Constitu 
tion,  many  of  the  statesmen,  and  a  majority  of  the  people  of 
South  Carolina,  adhered  with  unshaken  pertinacity  to  the  con 
viction  that  a  State  can  constitutionally  and  rightfully  arrest 
the  operation  of  an  act  of  Congress  within  her  own  limits, 
when  she  believes  that  it  transcends  the  powers  of  Congress. 
Events  were  now  to  bring  this  doctrine  to  the  test  of  an  actual 
collision  ;  and,  according  as  that  collision  should  be  met  by  the 


430  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

General  Government,  the  Constitution  would  be  freed  in  all 
future  time  from  further  hazards  to  its  authority,  or  the  neces 
sary  assertion  of  that  authority  might  have  to  be  undertaken  at 
some  future  period  amid  the  perils  and  sufferings  of  civil  war. 
"What  part  Mr.  Webster  acted  in  this  emergency,  what  were  his 
opinions  respecting  the  steps  that  ought  to  be  taken,  and  the 
attitude  in  which  the  Government  ought  to  be  left  in  reference 
to  this  whole  subject,  must  now  be  explained. 

In  November,  1832,  a  State  convention  assembled  at  Co 
lumbia,  in  South  Carolina,  and  adopted  an  ordinance  declaring 
the  revenue  laws  of  the  United  States  to  be  null  and  void 
within  the  limits  of  that  State ;  and  making  it  the  duty  of  the 
Legislature  to  pass  such  State  laws  as  would  be  necessary  to 
carry  the  ordinance  in  question  into  effect  from  and  after  the 
1st  of  February,  1833.  The  Legislature  assembled  on  the  27th 
of  November,  and  the  Governor  laid  before  them  the  ordinance 
of  the  convention,  now  become  "  a  part  of  the  fundamental  law 
of  South  Carolina."  In  his  message,  he  said  that  "  the  die  has 
been  at  last  cast,  and  South  Carolina  has  at  length  appealed  to 
her  ulterior  sovereignty  as  a  member  of  this  confederacy,  and 
has  planted  herself  on  her  reserved  rights.  The  rightful  exer 
cise  of  this  power  is  not  a  question  which  we  shall  any  longer 
argue.  It  is  sufficient  that  she  has  willed  it,  and  that  the  act 
is  done ;  nor  is  its  strict  compatibility  with  our  constitutional 
obligation  to  all  laws  passed  by  the  General  Government, 
within  the  authorized  grants  of  power,  to  be  drawn  in  question, 
when  this  interposition  is  exerted  in  a  case  in  which  the  com 
pact  has  been  palpably,  deliberately,  and  dangerously  violated. 
That  it  brings  up  a  conjuncture  of  deep  and  momentous  inter 
est  is  neither  to  be  concealed  nor  denied.  This  crisis  presents 
a  class  of  duties  which  is  referable  to  yourselves.  You  have 
been  commanded  by  the  people,  in  their  highest  sovereignty,  to 
take  care  that,  within  the  limits  of  this  State,  their  will  shall 
be  obeyed.  .  .  .  The  measure  of  legislation  which  you  have  to 
employ  at  this  crisis  is  the  precise  amount  of  such  enactments 
as  may  be  necessary  to  render  it  utterly  impossible  to  collect, 
within  our  limits,  the  duties  imposed  by  the  protective  tariffs 
thus  nullified."  He  proceeds  :  "  That  you  shall  arm  every 
citizen  with  a  civil  process,  by  which  he  may  claim,  if  he 


1832.]  NULLIFICATION.  431 

pleases,  a  restitution  of  his  goods,  seized  under  the  existing  im 
posts,  on  his  giving  security  to  abide  the  issue  of  a  suit  at  law ; 
and,  at  the  same  time,  define  what  shall  constitute  treason 
against  the  State,  and,  by  a  bill  of  pains  and  penalties,  compel 
obedience,  and  punish  disobedience  to  your  own  laws,  are 
points  too  obvious  to  require  any  discussion.  In  one  word,  you 
must  survey  the  whole  ground.  You  must  look  to  and  provide 
for  all  possible  contingencies.  In  your  own  limits,  your  own 
courts  of  judicature  must  not  only  be  supreme,  but  you  must 
look  to  the  ultimate  issue  of  any  conflict  of  jurisdiction  and 
power  between  them  and  the  courts  of  the  United  States." 

In  prompt  compliance  with  this  and  other  recommendations 
in  the  Governor's  message,  the  Legislature  passed  acts  providing 
for  the  replevin  of  goods  that  might  be  seized  under  the  revenue 
laws  of  the  United  States ;  inflicting  heavy  punishments  upon 
any  persons  who  might  undertake  to  execute  those  laws ;  and 
raising  military  forces  to  resist  the  collection  of  the  revenue  of 
the  United  States,  and  to  repel  any  efforts  of  the  General  Gov 
ernment  to  coerce  the  State  into  a  submission  to  their  execution. 
On  the  20th  of  December  the  Governor  issued  his  proclamation, 
giving  notice  that  he  was  ready  to  accept  the  services  of  volun 
teers  for  this  purpose.  Thus  the  whole  revenue  system  of  the 
United  States  was  obstructed,  and  apparently  overthrown,  in 
South  Carolina;  so  that,  if  these  measures  were  left  without 
being  defeated  and  suppressed,  foreign  merchandise,  of  any  de 
scription,  could  be  introduced  into  the  ports  of  that  State  with 
out  the  payment  of  any  duties  whatever.  No  period  was  as 
signed  for  the  operation  of  this  state  of  things.  Nothing  was 
left  for  the  United  States  by  this  State  legislation  but  uncondi 
tional  submission.  In  an  address,  however,  issued  by  the  Con 
vention  of  South  Carolina  to  the  people  of  the  United  States, 
they  said :  "  Having  now  presented,  for  the  consideration  of  the 
Federal  Government,  and  our  confederate  States,  the  fixed  and 
final  determination  of  this  State  in  relation  to  the  protecting 
system,  it  remains  for  us  to  submit  a  plan  of  taxation  in  which 
we  would  be  willing  to  acquiesce,  in  a  spirit  of  liberal  conces 
sion,  provided  we  are  met  in  due  time  and  in  a  becoming  spirit, 
by  the  States  interested  in  the  protection  of  manufactures." 

Mr.  Webster  had  to  perform  a  very  delicate  duty,  before  the 


432  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

meeting  of  Congress,  which,  while  it  would  present  to  the  coun 
try  the  grounds  on  which  he  called  in  question  the  general  policy 
of  the  Administration,  would  signify  what  was  to  be  expected 
of  that  Administration  in  regard  to  the  impending  collision 
with  South  Carolina.  It  was  highly  important,  on  the  one  hand, 
that,  in  criticising  the  conduct  of  the  Administration,  he  should 
not  place  himself  in  such  a  position  toward  it  that  his  aid  could 
not  be  sought  when  the  time  should  arrive  for  asserting  the  just 
authority  of  the  Constitution ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  it  was,  on 
the  other  hand,  equally  important  that  the  country  should  un 
derstand  that  he  did  not  consider  the  Constitution  free  from 
dangers  arising  from  the  course  of  the  Administration  itself. 
It  was  his  habit,  when  requested  to  address  bodies  of  men  assem 
bled  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  the  objects  of  party  organiza 
tion,  to  speak  with  great  circumspection,  to  seek  to  influence 
public  opinion,  and,  through  public  opinion,  to  act  upon  men  in 
official  stations.  Such  an  opportunity  presented  itself  by  the 
assembling  of  a  political  convention  of  the  National  Republican 
party  of  Massachusetts,  at  "Worcester,  on  the  12th  of  October 
(1832),  preparatory  to  the  annual  elections  in  that  State,  and  to 
the  presidential  election,  in  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  Mr. 
Clay  was  the  candidate  of  this  party. 

In  his  speech  on  this  occasion,  Mr.  "Webster  called  the  atten 
tion  of  the  country,  and  of  General  Jackson  himself,  to  the  atti 
tude  in  which  the  latter  stood  in  reference  to  some  of  the  powers 
of  the  Constitution.  After  adverting  to  the  fact  that,  in  South 
Carolina,  the  execution  of  the  revenue  laws  of  the  Union  was 
openly  threatened  with  resistance,  and  that  in  Georgia  a  decree 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  directing  the  deliv 
erance  of  individuals  held  in  prison  by  the  State  authorities, 
was  set  at  naught,  he  proceeded  to  show  that  the  manner  in 
which  the  President  had  treated  the  powers  of  the  Constitution 
was  signally  unfavorable  to  their  present  execution  and  their 
future  stability.  He  contrasted  the  President's  annual  message 
of  1830,  which  asserted  the  constitutional  power  to  protect  and 
foster  domestic  manufactures,  with  the  recent  "  veto  "  message, 
which  treated  laws  of  protection  as  "  a  prostitution  of  our  gov 
ernment  to  the  advancement  of  the  few  at  the  expense  of  the 
many ; "  and  he  adverted  to  the  fact  that  the  tariff  act  of  1824, 


1832.]  NULLIFICATION.  433 

now  the  object  of  attack  in  all  the  warfare  waged  against  the 
protective  policy,  was  voted  for  by  the  President,  who  was  then 
a  Senator  in  Congress.  Taking  the  present  opinions  of  the 
President,  however,  as  more  important  than  any  question  of  his 
personal  consistency,  Mr.  Webster  believed  that  they  were  hos 
tile  to  the  constitutional  power  of  Congress  to  establish  and 
maintain  the  system  of  protection,  in  whole  or  in  part.  The 
presidential  election,  which  occurred  soon  afterward,  resulted 
in  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Clay,  and  in  the  reelection  of  General  Jack 
son  by  a  very  great  majority  of  the  electoral  votes.1 

Whatever  might  have  been  General  Jackson's  personal  opin 
ions  respecting  the  tariff,  a  duty  was  cast  upon  him  which  he 
certainly  exhibited  no  desire  to  avoid.  He  regarded  the  ordi 
nance  of  South  Carolina  and  the  acts  of  her  Legislature  as  suffi 
cient  notice  to  him  that  the  collection  of  the  revenue  was  to  be 
forcibly  resisted  in  that  State ;  and,  on  the  10th  of  December, 
he  issued  his  celebrated  proclamation,  which,  adopting  entirely 
the  views  that  had  been  maintained  by  Mr.  Webster  (in  the  de 
bate  of  1830)  concerning  the  nature  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
powers  of  Congress,  directed  the  officers  of  the  revenue  to  dis 
charge  their  several  duties,  warned  the  people  and  authorities 
of  South  Carolina  of  the  consequences  of  their  resistance,  and 
frankly  making  known  that,  in  his  opinion,  the  time  had  arrived 
when  the  alleged  inequality  of  laws,  "  which,"  he  said,  "  may 
have  been  unwisely,  not  unconstitutionally  passed,"  could  be 
removed,  he  expressed  the  hope  that  they  would  retrace  their 
steps.  At  the  same  time,  he  distinctly  and  firmly  informed 
them  that  the  acts  which  they  meditated  were  treason,  that  the 
laws  of  the  United  States  must  be  executed,  and  that  all  oppo 
sition  to  them  must  be  put  down. 

It  had  become  apparent,  before  the  assembling  of  Congress 
in  December,  that  the  public  men  of  South  Carolina,  who  con 
trolled  the  action  of  the  State,  were  resolved  to  maintain  the 
asserted  right  of  nullification.  Mr.  Calhoun  had  been  elected 
to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  and  had  determined  to  re 
sign  the  vice-presidency,  and  to  take  his  seat  in  that  body. 

1  Mr.   Clay  obtained  the   States  of  South  Carolina  was  given  to  Mr.  Floyd, 
Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  Connecti-  of  Virginia.     General   Jackson  had  all 
cut,  Delaware,  Maryland,  and  Kentucky —  the  other  States — two  hundred  and  nine- 
forty-nine  electoral  votes.     The  vote  of  teen  votes. 
29 


434  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

His  pamphlet  on  the  right  of  nullification,  in  the  form  of  a  letter 
to  the  Governor  of  South  Carolina,  was  regarded  by  Mr.  Web 
ster  as  a  paper  that  required  an  answer.  It  was  his  purpose  to 
make  that  answer  in  a  similar  form,  by  addressing  a  public  letter 
on  the  subject  to  Chancellor  Kent ; l  but  the  announcement  of 
Mr.  Calhoun's  intention  to  be  upon  the  floor  of  the  Senate  at 
the  approaching  session  led  Mr.  "Webster  to  prefer  encountering 
his  doctrines  there. 

Mr.  Webster  was  on  his  way  to  "Washington,  in  the  month 
of  December,  after  the  proclamation  had  been  issued  for  several 
days.  At  an  inn  in  New  Jersey  he  met  a  traveller,  to  whom  he 
was  not  known,  and  of  whom  he  inquired  the  news.  The  stranger, 
who  was  fresh  from  Washington,  answered  that  General  Jackson 
had  made  a  proclamation,  taken  altogether  from  Mr.  Webster's 
speech  of  1830,  in  reply  to  General  Hayne.  The  proclamation  was 
written  by  Mr.  Edward  Livingston,  then  Secretary  of  State.2  On 
his  arrival  at  Philadelphia,  Mr.  Webster  met  there  Mr.  Clay,  who 
informed  him  that  he  had  prepared  a  plan  for  settling  the  tariff 
difficulty,  which  he  would  make  known  to  Mr.  Webster  when 
they  reached  Washington.  He  did  not  learn  it,  however,  directly 
from  Mr.  Clay,  but  a  copy  of  Mr.  Clay's  intended  bill,  in  the 
handwriting  of  Mr.  Clay,  was  placed  in  Mr.  Webster's  hands 
by  a  third  person,  in  the  early  part  of  the  session.  It  contained 
a  preamble,  reciting  that  differences  of  opinion  on  the  policy  of 
protecting  manufacturing  industry,  by  duties  on  similar  articles 
when  imported,  were  agitating  the  public  mind,  and  threatening 
serious  disturbances,  which  it  was  desirable  to  prevent.  The 
first  section  then  proposed  to  enact  that  the  existing  tariff  laws 
should  remain  in  force  until  March  3,  1840,  and  that  then  all 
should  be  and  "  hereby  are  "  repealed.  The  second  section  pro 
vided  that,  until  March  3,  1840,  no  higher  or  other  duties  than 
those  now  existing  shall  be  laid ;  "  and  from  and  after  the  afore 
said  day,  all  duties  collected  upon  any  article  whatever  of  for 
eign  importation  shall  be  equal,  according  to  the  value  thereof, 
and  solely  for  the  purpose  and  with  the  intent  of  providing  such 

1  Correspondence,  i.,  526.  of  New  York.     This  and  some  other  pa- 

2  MS.  memorandum  by  Mr.  Webster,    pers  derived  from  Mr.  Webster  will  be 
in  the  possession  of  Hon.  Hiram  Ketchum,    cited  hereafter  as  "  Ketchum  MS." 


1833.]  MR.  CLAY'S  COMPROMISE.  435 

revenue  as  may  be  necessary  to  an  economical  expenditure  of 
the  Government,  without  regard  to  the  protection  or  encourage 
ment  of  any  branch  of  domestic  industry  whatever"  When 
Mr.  Clay  offered  his  bill,  however,  in  the  Senate,  the  words  here 
printed  in  italics  were  not  embraced  in  it,  and  other  modifica 
tions  were  made,  as  will  be  seen  hereafter.  But,  either  with  or 
without  these  words,  the  measure  was  not  one  that  could  receive 
Mr.  "Webster's  support.  For  the  original  introduction  of  the 
policy  of  protection  he  was  in  no  degree  responsible.  But  it 
had  been  made  the  policy  of  the  country ;  and,  since  the  tariff 
act  of  1824,  the  great  stimulus  it  had  given  to  manufactures 
had  caused  very  large  masses  of  capital,  and  also  a  great  aggre 
gate  of  smaller  amounts,  to  be  invested  in  establishments  which 
represented  not  merely  the  interests  of  the  rich,  but  the  interests 
of  those  who  could  by  no  means  be  classed  in  that  category.  It 
was  no  longer  a  question,  in  Mr.  Webster's  view,  as  it  was  in 
1817,  whether  an  original  policy  of  free  trade  is  fyest  for  such  a 
nation  as  ours.  That  question  had  been  settled ;  a  long  course 
of  legislation  had  established  the  opposite  policy ;  and  it  was, 
therefore,  with  Mr.  "Webster  simply  a  question  whether,  for  the 
mere  purpose  of  conforming  his  present  public  conduct  to  theo 
retical  opinions  which  he  had  expressed  seventeen  years  before, 
in  a  very  different  state  of  things,  he  should  lend  his  aid  to  over 
turn  a  system,  in  the  continuance  of  which  he  believed  the  in 
terests  of  the  country  to  be  now  deeply  involved. 

Moreover,  with  respect  to  the  constitutional  power  of  Con 
gress  to  so  collect  its  revenues  as  to  discriminate  in  favor  of  our 
domestic  industry — a  power  which  Mr.  Webster  never  at  any 
time  questioned,  and  which  was  all  that  he  ever  contended  for — 
much  important  information,  respecting  the  purposes  of  those 
who  founded  and  the  people  who  ratified  the  Constitution,  had 
been  added  to  what  was  known  when  the  policy  of  protection 
was  first  resorted  to.  In  1830-'33,  there  was  no  prominent 
statesman  in  the  party  with  which  Mr.  Webster  acted  who 
doubted  the  existence  of  this  power;  and  least  of  all  men  did 
he  doubt  it.  There  were,  in  truth,  many  important  men  in  the 
opposite  party,  who  held  it  as  firmly  as  he  did,  and  upon  the 
same  grounds. 

There  was  still  another  reason  why  Mr.  Webster  could  not 


436  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIX. 

be  a  party  to  any  abandonment  of  this  policy,  or  to  any  renun 
ciation  of  the  constitutional  power.  The  laws  of  the  Union 
were  resisted.  The  whole  revenue  system  wras,  in  South  Caro 
lina,  threatened  with  direct  nullification.  The  President  of  the 
United  States  had  a  duty  to  perform,  which  he  could  not  per 
form  unless  his  hands  were  strengthened  by  appropriate  legisla 
tion.  At  such  a  time  to  undertake  a  modification  of  the  exist 
ing  laws,  which  would  carry  in  itself  an  immediate  or  prospective 
renunciation  of  the  constitutional  power  on  which  those  laws 
had  been  passed — passed  with  the  concurrence  of  men  who  dif 
fered  about  almost  every  thing  else — appeared  to  Mr.  "Webster 
to  be  highly  inexpedient  and  dangerous.  In  all  the  discussions 
on  Mr.  Clay's  "  compromise  "  measure,  as,  when  introduced,  it 
came  to  be  regarded,  and  in  all  the  changes  that  it  underwent 
from  Mr.  Clay's  original  plan,  it  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  "Webster's 
chief  objection  was  aimed  at  what  he  regarded  as  an  unwise 
and  unworthy  surrender  of  a  constitutional  power,  as  an  unjusti 
fiable  attempt  to  control  its  future  exercise,  and  as  an  impracti 
cable  effort  to  settle  the  degree  of  protection  which  it  would  be 
necessary  to  afford  to  the  manufacturing  industry  of  the  country 
at  the  end  of  eight  or  nine  years. 

The  situation  of  affairs  at  Washington  in  the  early  part  of 
the  session  was  thus  described  by  Mr.  "Webster  to  two  of  his 
friends : 

[TO  MR.  WM.   SULLIVAN.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  3, 1833. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  am  glad  to  receive  your  letter.  "We  are  surrounded 
with  difficulties  here,  of  various  sorts ;  and  it  is  not  a  little  uncertain  how 
we  shall  get  out  of  them.  At  the  present  moment,  it  would  seem  that 
public  opinion,  and  the  stern  rebuke  by  the  Executive  government,  had,  in 
a  great  measure,  suppressed  the  immediate  danger  of  nullification.  As  far 
as  we  see  the  results  of  the  legislation  of  South  Carolina,  her  laws  limp  far 
behind  her  ordinance.  For  aught  that  appears,  nothing  will  interrupt  the 
ordinary  collection  of  duties,  after  February  1st,  unless  some  individual 
chooses  to  try  the  nullifying  remedy.  If  any  importer  should  suffer  a 
seizure  to  be  made,  and  should  endeavor  to  replevy,  under  the  State  pro 
cess,  the  collector  would  probably  not  deliver  up  the  goods  to  the  sheriff, 
nor  suffer  his  own  goods  to  be  taken  in  witJiernam.  This,  probably,  would 
bring  on  a  trial  of  strength. 

"  But  our  more  imminent  danger,  in  my  opinion,  is  that,  seizing  on  the 


1833.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  437 

occasion,  the  anti-tariff  party  will  prostrate  the  whole  tariff  system.  You 
will  have  seen  the  bill  reported  by  Mr.  Verplanck.  Great  and  extraordi 
nary  efforts  are  put  forth  to  push  that  bill  rapidly  through  Congress.  It 
is  likely  to  be  finally  acted  upon,  at  least  in  the  House  of  Representatives, 
before  the  country  can  be  made  to  look  on  it  in  its  true  character.  On  the 
other  hand,  our  friends  will  resist  it,  of  course,  and  hold  on  to  the  last.  A 
vigorous  opposition  will,  at  least,  it  may  be  hoped,  be  made,  and,  as  I  be 
lieve,  produce  the  necessity,  on  the  part  of  the  supporters  of  the  measure, 
to  make  some  beneficial  amendments  in  it,  before  even  it  can  get  through 
the  House  of  Representatives. 

"  Under  these  circumstances,  it  seems  to  me  it  would  be  extremely  useful 
that  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  should  express  its  temperate  but  firm 
opinion,  first  against  the  doctrine  of  nullification ;  secondly,  on  the  viola 
tion  of  the  public  faith,  which  would  be  perpetrated  by  this  thorough  and 
sudden  prostration  of  the  protective  system. 

"  On  this  ground  of  vested  interest  we  can  make,  if  well  sustained  at 
home,  the  most  efficient  stand  against  the  threatened  ruin.  We  mean  to 
occupy  this  ground,  and  to  make  the  most  of  it. 

"  If  the  bill  were  now  in  the  Senate,  it  would  not  pass ;  but,  how  far 
individuals  may  be  brought  over  by  party  discipline  in  the  drill  of  a  month, 
it  is  impossible  to  say. 

"  I  do  not  believe  the  President  himself  wishes  the  bill  to  pass.  E 
contra,  I  fancy  he  would  prefer  the  undivided  honor  of  suppressing  nullifi 
cation  now,  and  to  take  his  own  time  hereafter  to  remodel  the  tariff.  But 
the  party  push  on,  fearing  the  effect  of  the  doctrines  of  the  proclamation, 
and  endeavoring  to  interpose,  and  to  save  Carolina,  not  by  the  proclama 
tion,  but  by  taking  away  the  ground  of  complaint. 

"  But  against  this,  again,  there  is  some  degree  of  undercurrent,  because 
there  are  some  who  think  that  surrendering  the  tariff  to  the  menaces  of 
nullification  would  be  voting  a  triumph  to  Mr.  Calhoun,  at  the  expense  of 
Mr.  Van  Buren's  expectations,  etc. 

"  I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  from  you  and  other  friends,  especially  if  you 
can  give  me  any  good  advice. 

"  Yours  ever  truly, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

[TO  CHIEF-JUSTICE  LIVERMORE,  OF  NEW  HAMPSHIRE.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  5, 1833. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  Your  letter  of  December  29th  is  received,  and  has 
given  me  pleasure.  I  regard  you,  my  dear  sir,  not  only  as  an  acquaintance 
of  many  years'  standing,  but  also  as  one  whose  countenance  and  kindness 
were  important  to  me  in  youth.  I  shall  be  sure  to  send  you  any  thing 
which  I  may  think  you  would  like  to  receive,  and  I  beg  of  you  not  to  take 
the  trouble  to  acknowledge  receipts.  It  will  be  quite  enough  that  I  under- 
derstand  generally  that  such  communications  are  welcome. 


438  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIX. 

"  The  impression  here  to-day  seems  to  be  that  nullification  has  assumed 
a  less  threatening  aspect ;  at  least,  the  danger  of  immediate  collision  ap 
pears  less.  The  act  passed  by  the  Legislature  of  South  Carolina  to  carry 
the  ordinance  into  effect  does  not  come  up  to  the  ordinance.  It  may  happen 
that,  notwithstanding  the  ordinance  and  the  act,  things  may  go  on  much 
as  they  have  done. 

"  Nothing  is  more  uncertain  than  the  fate  of  the  new  Tariff  Bill.  It  will 
pass  the  House  if  the  President  desires  it ;  but  that  is  doubtful.  If  it  were 
now  in  the  Senate,  it  would  be  postponed  from  indisposition  to  act  again 
on  that  subject  so  soon ;  but  I  do  not  know  what  will  be  done  with  it 
should  it  come  to  us  a  month  hence. 

"  It  is  sometimes  said  that,  in  so  changing  a  world,  if  people  will  but 
stand  still,  others,  sooner  or  later,  will  come  to  them.    Were  you  not  struck 
with  this  truth  in  seeing  the  proclamation  ? 
"  I  am,  dear  sir, 

"  With  constant  regard,  yours, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

In  his  annual  message,  at  the  opening  of  the  session,  Presi 
dent  Jackson  had  suggested  that  it  might  become  necessary  for 
him  to  recommend  certain  measures  to  enable  him  to  meet  the 
threatened  resistance  to  the  laws  of  the  Union.  On  the  16th 
of  January  he  sent  a  special  message  to  Congress,  communi 
cating,  officially  and  in  detail,  what  had  occurred  in  South  Caro 
lina,  and  recommending  the  measures  which  he  deemed  neces 
sary  to  meet  the  emergency.1  He  asked  that  provision  might 
be  made,  that  whenever,  by  unlawful  combination  or  obstruc 
tion,  in  any  State  or  port,  the  collection  of  duties  had  become 
impracticable,  the  President  should  be  authorized  to  change  the 
collection  districts  and  ports  of  entry,  and  to  establish  the  cus 
tom-house  at  some  secure  place,  where  vessels  and  cargoes  could 
be  detained  in  the  custody  of  the  collector  until  the  duties  were 
properly  paid  or  secured,  and  to  protect  that  custody  by  the 
employment  of  the  land  and  naval  forces.  To  shield  the  officers 
so  acting  from  suits  in  the  State  courts,  he  asked  that  provision 
be  made  for  the  removal  of  such  cases  to  the  Federal  tribunals, 
where  they  should  be  tried  and  determined  as  if  they  had  been 
originally  instituted  there.  Mr.  Calhoun  had  now  taken  his 
seat  in  the  Senate.  On  the  motion  to  refer  the  message  to  the 
Committee  on  the  Judiciary,  he  made  some  remarks  that  ex 
hibited  a  great  deal  of  feeling,  and  indicated  his  purpose  to  con- 
1  Mr.  Webster  was  apprised  of  this  message  before  it  was  sent. 


1833.]  THE  "FORCE  BILL."  439 

test  strenuously  the  propriety  of  the  President's  course.  The 
message,  however,  was  quietly  referred  to  the  Judiciary  Com 
mittee,  and  in  less  than  a  week  their  chairman,  Mr.  Wilkins, 
reported  a  bill,  "  further  to  provide  for  the  collection  of  duties 
on  imports,"  which  became  known  and  has  since  been  called 
the  celebrated  "Force  Bill."  Its  consideration  was  fixed  for 
Monday,  the  28th  of  January,  as  the  special  order  of  the  day. 
Mr.  Calhoun,  appreciating  what  was  impending,  immediately 
made  a  movement  to  interpose  what  he  denominated  a  "  plea 
in  bar,"  against  this  use  of  force.  He  offered  certain  resolu 
tions,  for  the  purpose  of  testing  the  principles  on  which  the  bill 
rested,  expressing  his  views  of  the  nature  and  extent  of  the 
powers  of  the  Federal  Government.1  They  were  ordered  to  be 
printed.  Mr.  Calhoun  pressed  them  on  the  consideration  of  the 
Senate.  Mr.  Webster  professed  his  readiness  to  meet  the  dis 
cussion  at  any  proper  time,  but  did  not  think  they  should  be 
allowed  to  interfere  with  the  progress  of  the  bill.  They  were 
laid  on  the  table,  and  the  revenue  collection  bill  was  proceeded 
with ;  Mr.  Calhoun  saying  that  he  had  a  deep  conviction  of  the 
truth  of  his  propositions,  and  Mr.  Webster  replying  in  his  seat, 
"  I  do  not  doubt  it." 

The  "  Force  Bill,"  when  originally  introduced  into  the  Senate, 


1  The  following  are  the  resolutions:  "Resolved,  That  the  assertions  that  the 

"Resolved,  That  the  people  of  the  several  people  of  these  United  States,  taken  collec- 

States  composing  these  United  States  are  tively  as  individuals,  are  now,  or  ever  have 

united  as  parties  to  a  constitutional  compact  been,  united  on  the  principle  of  the  social 

to  which  the  people  of  each  State  acceded  as  compact,  and  as  such  are  now  formed  into 

a  separate  sovereign  community,  each  bind-  one  nation  or  people,  or  that  they  have  ever 

ing  itself  by  its  own  particular  ratification  •  Reen  so  united  in  any  one  stage  of  their  po- 

and  that  the  Union,  of  which  the  said  compact  Htical  existence ;  that  the  people  of  the  sev- 

is  the  bond,  is  a  union  between  the  States  eral  States  composing  the  Union  have  not,  as 

ratifying  the  same.  members  thereof,  retained  their  sovereignty  ; 

"  Resolved,  That  the  people  of  the  several  that  tne  allegiance  of  their  citizens  has  been 

States,  thus  united  by  the  constitutional  com-  transferred  to  the  General  Government ;  that 

pact,  in  forming  that  instrument,  and  in  ere-  tne7  nave  parted  with  the  right  of  punishing 

ating  a  General  Government  to  carry  into  treason  through  their  respective  State  gov- 

effect  the  objects  for  which  they  were  formed  ernments ;  and  that  they  have  not  the  right 

delegated  to  that  Government,  for  that  pur-  of  Judging  in  the  last  resort  as  to  the  extent 

E,  certain  definite  powers,  to  be  exercised  °^  the  powers  reserved,  and,  of  consequence, 
tly,  reserving,  at  the  same  time  each  °f  those  delegated;  are  not  only  without 
;  to  itself,  the  residuary  mass  of  powers  foundation  in  truth,  but  are  contrary  to  the 
to  be  exercised  by  its  own  separate  Govern-  m°8t  certain  and  plain  historical  facts,  and 
ment ;  and  that,  whenever  the  General  Gov-  tne  clearest  deductions  of  reason ;  and  that 
eminent  assumes  the  exercise  of  powers  not  a^  exercise  of  power  on  the  part  of  the  Gen- 
delegated  by  the  compact,  its  acts  are  unau-  era^  Government,  or  any  of  its  departments, 
thorized,  and  are  of  no  effect ;  and  that  the  claiming  authority  from  so  erroneous  as- 
same  Government  is  not  made  the  final  judge  sumptions,  must  of  necessity  be  nnconsti- 
of  the  powers  delegated  to  it  since  that  tutional,  must  tend  directly  and  inevita- 
would  make  its  discretion,  and  not  its  consti-  Dlv  to  subvert  the  sovereignty  of  the  States, 
tution,  the  measure  of  its  powers ;  but  that  J°  destroy  the  federal  character  of  the  Un 
as  in  all  other  cases  of  compact  among  gov-  !on»  and  to  rear  on  its  rums  a  coiisol- 
ereign  parties,  without  any  common  judge  idated  Government,  without  constitutional 
each  has  an  equal  right  to  judge  for  itself  as  check  or  limitation,  and  which  must  ne- 
well  of  the  infraction  as  of  the  mode  and  cessarily  terminate  in  the  loss  of  liberty 
measure  of  redress.  itself." 


440  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

was  wholly  an  Administration  measure.  Its  conduct  through 
the  Senate  was  left  principally  to  the  charge  of  Mr.  Grundy,  of 
Tennessee ;  but  many  of  General  Jackson's  friends  recoiled  from 
its  support.  In  this  condition  of  things,  other  aid  became  essen 
tial  ;  and,  among  the  President's  friends  in  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives,  there  was  much  inquiry  as  to  "  where  Mr.  Webster 
was."  Several  of  these  gentlemen  sought  and  obtained  personal 
interviews  with  him.  At  length,  as  the  discussion  proceeded  in 
the  Senate,  Mr.  "Webster  being  absent,  from  engagements  or  ill 
health,  a  member  of  the  President's  Cabinet  visited  him  at  his 
lodgings,  and  earnestly  requested  him  to  take  an  active  part  in 
the  defence  of  this  measure,  and  in  preparing  and  making  all 
necessary  amendments  to  it.1 

In  a  few  days  Mr.  Webster  appeared  in  his  place  in  the  Sen 
ate,  and  found  this  bill  an  object  of  attack  from  some  of  the 
Administration  members.  Having  interposed  for  the  purpose 
of  saying  a  few  words  against  a  motion  to  postpone  the  bill, 
and  urging  that  the  Senate  continue  its  discussion  until  all  who 
desired  had  been  heard  upon  it,  Mr.  King,  of  Alabama,  said 
that,  if  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  wished  to  deliver  his 
sentiments  upon  the  bill,  he  should  be  happy  to  listen  to  him  at 
any  length.  Mr.  "Webster  simply  replied  that  he  appreciated 
this  kindness,  but  that,  under  existing  circumstances,  he  had  no 
disposition  to  address  the  Senate  on  this  bill,  then  or  at  any 
future  time.2  As  the  bill  was  now  the  special  order  for  each 
day  at  12  o'clock,  it  was  called  on  the  following  day  (February 
8th),  when  Mr.  Webster  rose  and  said : 

"  He  wished  to  interrupt  the  course  of  the  debate  for  a  single  moment, 
in  order  to  set  one  matter  right,  if  he  could.  Since  a  warm  controversy 
was  rising,  he  thought  it  but  proper  that  we  should  understand  between 
what  parties  the  controversy  existed. 

"  Soon  after  the  declaration  of  war  by  the  United  States  against  Eng 
land,  an  American  vessel  fell  in  at  sea  with  one  of  England,  and  gave  in 
formation  of  the  declaration.  The  English  master  inquired,  with  no  little 
warmth  of  manner  and  expression,  why  the  United  States  had  gone  to  war 
with  England.  The  American  answered  him,  that  difficulties  had  existed 
for  a  good  while  between  the  two  Governments,  and  that  it  was  at  length 
thought  in  America  to  be  high  time  for  the  parties  to  come  to  a  better  un 
derstanding. 

i  Ketchum  MS.  2  July  7th. 


1833.]  THE   "FORCE  BILL."  441 

"  I  incline  to  think,  Mr.  President,  that  a  war  has  broken  out  here, 
which  is  very  likely,  before  it  closes,  to  bring  the  parties  to  a  better  under 
standing.  But  who  are  the  parties  ?  Will  you  please  to  remember,  sir, 
that  this  is  a  measure  founded  in  Executive  recommendation  ?  The  Presi 
dent,  charged  by  the  Constitution  with  the  duty  of  executing  the  laws, 
has  sent  us  a  message,  alleging  that  powerful  combinations  are  forming  to 
resist  their  execution ;  that  the  existing  laws  are  not  sufficient  to  meet  the 
crisis ;  and  recommending  sundry  enactments  as  necessary  for  the  occasion. 
The  message  being  referred  to  the  Judiciary  Committee,  that  committee 
has  reported  a  bill  in  compliance  with  the  President's  recommendation. 
It  has  not  gone  beyond  the  message.  Every  thing  in  the  bill,  every  single 
provision,  which  is  now  complained  of,  is  in  the  message.  Yet  the  whole 
war  is  raised  against  the  bill,  and  against  the  committee,  as  if  the  com 
mittee  had  originated  the  whole  matter.  Gentlemen  get  up  and  address 
us,  as  if  they  were  arguing  against  some  measure  of  a  factious  opposition. 
They  look  the  same  way,  sir,  and  speak  with  the  same  vehemence,  as  they 
used  to  do  when  they  raised  their  patriotic  voices  against  what  they  called 
a  'coalition.' 

"  Now,  sir,  let  it  be  known,  once  for  all,  that  this  is  an  Administration 
measure  ;  that  it  is  the  President's  own  measure ;  and  I  pray  gentlemen  to 
have  the  goodness,  if  they  call  it  hard  names,  and  talk  loudly  against  its 
friends,  not  to  overlook  its  source.  Let  them  attack  it,  if  they  choose  to 
attack  it,  in  its  origin. 

"  Let  it  be  known,  also,  that  a  majority  of  the  committee  reporting  the 
bill  are  friends  and  supporters  of  the  Administration ;  and  that  it  is  main 
tained  in  this  House  by  those  who  are  among  its  steadfast  friends  of  long 
standing. 

"  It  is,  as  I  have  already  said,  the  President's  own  measure.  Let  those 
who  oppose  it,  oppose  it  as  such.  Let  them  fairly  acknowledge  its  origin, 
and  meet  it  accordingly. 

"  The  honorable  member  from  Kentucky  (Mr.  Bibb),  who  spoke  first 
against  the  bill,  said  he  found  in  it  another  Jersey  prison-ship ;  let  him 
state,  then,  that  the  President  has  sent  a  message  to  Congress,  recommend 
ing  a  renewal  of  the  sufferings  and  horrors  of  the  Jersey  prison-ship.  He 
says,  too,  that  the  bill  snuffs  of  the  alien  and  sedition  law.  But  the  bill  is 
fragrant  of  no  flower  except  the  same  which  perfumes  the  message.  Let 
him,  then,  say,  if  he  thinks  so,  that  General  Jackson  advises  a  revival  of 
the  principles  of  the  alien  and  sedition  laws. 

"  The  honorable  member  from  Virginia  (Mr.  Tyler)  finds  out  a  resem 
blance  between  this  bill  and  the  Boston  port  bill.  Sir,  if  one  of  these  be 
imitated  from  the  other,  the  imitation  is  the  President's.  The  bill  makes 
the  President,  he  says,  sole  judge  of  the  Constitution.  Does  he  mean  to 
say  that  the  President  has  recommended  a  measure  which  is  to  make  him 
sole  judge  of  the  Constitution?  The  bill,  he  declares,  sacrifices  every 
thing  to  arbitrary  power ;  he  will  lend  no  aid  to  its  passage ;  he  would 
rather  '  be  a  dog  and  bay  the  moon,  than  such  a  Roman.'  He  did  not  say 


442  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

*  the  old  Roman.'  Yet  the  gentleman  well  knows  that,  if  any  thing  is  sac 
rificed  to  arbitrary  power,  the  sacrifice  has  been  demanded  by  the  '  old 
Roman,'  as  he  and  others  have  called  him  ;  by  the  President  whom  he  has 
supported,  so  often  and  so  ably,  for  the  chief  magistracy  of  the  country. 
He  says,  too,  that  one  of  the  sections  is  an  English  Botany  Bay  law,  except 
that  it  is  worse.  This  section,  sir,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  just  what  the 
President's  message  recommended.  Similar  observations  are  applicable  to 
the  remarks  of  both  the  honorable  gentlemen  from  North  Carolina.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  particularize  those  remarks.  They  were  in  the  same  strain. 

"  Therefore,  sir,  let  it  be  understood,  let  it  be  known,  that  the  war 
which  these  gentlemen  choose  to  wage,  is  waged  against  the  measures  of 
the  Administration,  against  the  President  of  their  own  choice.  The  con 
troversy  has  arisen  between  him  and  them,  and,  in  its  progress,  they  will 
probably  come  to  a  distinct  understanding. 

"  Mr.  President,  I  am  not  to  be  understood  as  admitting  that  these 
charges  against  the  bill  are  just,  or  that  they  would  be  just  if  made 
against  the  message.  On  the  contrary,  I  think  them  wholly  unjust. 
No  one  of  them,  in  my  opinion,  can  be  made  good.  I  think  the  bill, 
or  some  similar  measure,  had  become  indispensable,  and  that  the  Presi 
dent  could  not  do  otherwise  than  bring  it  to  the  consideration  of  Con 
gress.  He  was  not  at  liberty  to  look  on  and  be  silent,  while  dangers 
threatened  the  Union,  which  existing  laws  were  not  competent,  in  his 
judgment,  to  avert. 

"  Mr.  President,  I  take  this  occasion  to  say  that  I  support  this  measure, 
as  an  independent  member  of  the  Senate,  in  the  discharge  of  the  dictates 
of  my  own  conscience.  I  am  no  man's  leader ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
follow  no  lead  but  that  of  public  duty  and  the  star  of  the  Constitution.  I 
believe  the  country  is  in  considerable  danger ;  I  believe  an  unlawful  com 
bination  threatens  the  integrity  of  the  Union.  I  believe  the  crisis  calls  for 
a  mild,  temperate,  forbearing,  but  inflexibly  firm  execution  of  the  laws ; 
and,  under  this  conviction,  I  give  a  hearty  support  to  the  Administration 
in  all  measures  which  I  deem  to  be  fair,  just,  and  necessary.  And,  in  sup 
porting  these  measures,  I  mean  to  take  my  fair  share  of  responsibility ;  to 
support  them  frankly  and  fairly,  without  reflections  on  the  past,  and  with 
out  mixing  other  topics  in  their  discussion. 

"  Mr.  President,  I  think  I  understand  the  sentiment  of  the  country  on 
this  subject.  I  think  public  opinion  sets,  with  an  irresistible  force,  in  favor 
of  the  Union,  in  favor  of  the  measures  recommended  by  the  President,  and 
against  the  new  doctrines  which  threaten  the  dissolution  of  the  Union.  I 
think  the  people  of  the  United  States  demand  of  us,  who  are  intrusted 
with  the  Government,  to  maintain  that  Government,  to  be  just,  and  fear 
not ;  to  make  all  necessary  and  suitable  provisions  for  the  execution  of  the 
laws,  and  to  sustain  the  Union  and  the  Constitution  against  whatsoever 
may  endanger  them.  For  one,  I  obey  this  public  voice ;  I  comply  with 
this  demand  of  the  people.  I  support  the  Administration  in  measures 
which  I  believe  to  be  necessary ;  and,  while  pursuing  this  course,  I  look 


1833.]  MR.  CALHOUN'S  POSITION.  443 

unhesitatingly,  and  with  the  utmost  confidence,  for  the  approbation  of  the 
country." 

The  Senators,  who  were  thus  put  upon  their  good  behavior 
toward  the  President  of  their  own  choice,  made  disclaimers  of 
their  belief  that  the  President  had  asked  for  such  powers ;  and 
one  of  them,  Mr.  Bibb,  commenting  on  the  first  and  fifth  sec 
tions  of  the  bill,  expressed  his  doubt  whether  any  President 
would  have  had  the  "  daring  effrontery  "  to  ask  for  such  powers, 
and  desired  to  know  what  was  the  "  secret  connection  "  between 
the  message  and  the  bill.  Mr.  Webster  replied  that  there  was 
nothing  in  the  bill  which  was  not  recommended  in  the  message ; 
and  then,  looking  at  Mr.  Bibb,  he  added,  "  I  will  tell  the  gen 
tleman  that  the  President  has  had  the  '  daring  effrontery '  to 
ask  for  these  powers,  no  matter  how  high  may  be  the  offence." 

This  evidence  that  Mr.  "Webster  was  to  act  with  the  Admin 
istration,  in  upholding  the  execution  of  the  laws  and  the  author 
ity  of  the  Constitution,  caused  dismay  in  several  quarters.  To 
the  Administration  Senators  who  were  inclined  to  resist  the 
passage  of  the  bill,  the  revelation  of  Mr.  "Webster's  purpose,  and 
of  his  complete  accord  with  the  President,  showed  that  their 
opposition  would  be  fruitless,  and  that  their  attempt  to  throw 
the  onus  of  the  bill  upon  Mr.  "Webster  would  not  succeed.  The 
well-known  determination  of  General  Jackson's  character,  act 
ing  in  the  same  direction  with  Mr.  Webster's  forensic  power, 
and  his  weight  in  the  country,  gave  Mr.  Calhoun  much  un 
easiness.  He  saw  that  great  forces  were  closing  around  him,  and 
that  his  position  was  one  of  much  peril.  But  he  was  a  very  able 
tactician,  and  having,  as  Mr.  Webster  thoroughly  believed  he 
had,  undoubting  confidence  in  the  truth  of  the  positions  he  had 
taken  in  his  resolutions,  he  was  very  anxious  to  bring  on  their 
discussion  in  the  Senate  before  the  "  Force  Bill "  could  pass. 
But,  before  this  could  be  done,  he  had  reason  to  be  alarmed.  It 
became  known  that  General  Jackson  had  used,  in  private,  very 
strong  language  in  regard  to  the  leaders  in  the  South  Carolina 
movement.  In  periods  and  scenes  of  excitement,  he  had  not 
always  been  willing  to  wait  for  the  due  course  of  law,  and  his 
temperament  was  well  understood  to  be  one  that  might  sud 
denly  visit  the  leaders  of  nullification  with  extreme  personal 
danger.  He  had  received  great  provocation ;  for,  on  the  llth 


444  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIX. 

of  January,  a  series  of  resolutions,  adopted  by  the  Legislature 
of  South  Carolina  in  answer  to  his  proclamation,  had  been  laid 
before  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  bitterly  denouncing 
him,  and  breathing  a  spirit  of  open  defiance.  His  resentments 
were  never  slow  to  kindle,  and,  on  this  occasion,  he  took  no 
pains  to  conceal  them.  In  this  attitude  of  affairs,  Mr.  Calhoun 
sought  the  interposition  of  Mr.  Clay.  An  interview  took  place 
between  these  gentlemen,  at  which  Mr.  Calhoun  obtained  the 
promise  of  Mr.  Clay's  interference.1  On  the  llth  of  February, 
the  "  Force  Bill "  being  still  pending,  Mr.  Clay  announced  in  the 
Senate  that  on  the  following  day  he  should  introduce  a  bill  to 
modify  the  tariff. 

This  sudden  and  unexpected  movement  changed  the  entire 
aspect  of  affairs.  Up  to  this  moment,  it  was  not  imagined  that 
there  could  be  in  the  Senate  more  than  two  parties  in  reference 
to  the  question  of  executing  the  revenue  laws  as  they  stood : 
the  one  consisting  of  all  who  held  to  the  duty  of  upholding  the 
authority  of  the  Government,  and  the  other  comprehending  those 
who  meant  to  resist  it.  It  now  appeared  to  be  Mr.  Clay's  purpose 
to  take  an  intermediate  position,  by  removing  what  was  put  for 
ward  by  South  Carolina  as  the  grievance  which  justified  her  re 
sort  to  nullification.  The  dangers  attending  this  step  were  man 
ifest.  On  the  one  side,  it  might  cause  the  Administration  to  be 
placed  in  the  apparent  attitude  of  asking  for  unnecessary  powers, 
and  might  throw  upon  them  the  odium  of  seeking  the  personal 
humiliation  and  political  ruin  of  Mr.  Calhoun  and  his  friends. 
On  the  other  side,  considering  the  attitude  taken  by  South 
Carolina,  her  threats  of  resistance,  and  her  military  preparations, 
a  sudden  reversal  of  the  long-established  policy  of  Congress,  by 
a  repeal  or  modification  of  the  laws  which  she  proposed  to 
resist,  was  not  unlikely  to  be  claimed  as  a  triumph  of  the  prin 
ciples  which  Mr.  Calhoun  had  advanced  as  the  true  theory  of 
the  Constitution.  To  Mr.  Webster,  this  movement  of  Mr. 
Clay  left  nothing  but  the  consideration  of  what  was  most  fit  to 
be  done  when  a  State  had  announced  her  purpose  to  obstruct 
the  execution  of  the  laws  of  the  Union.  He  could  not  join  in 
Mr.  Clay's  proposed  "  compromise,"  for  he  had,  in  the  most 

1  My  authority  for  this  statement  is    lated  to  me  the  particulars  of  the  inter- 
the  late  Mr.  Crittenden,  who  once  re-    view. 


1833.]  MR.  CLAY'S  COMPROMISE.  445 

public  manner,  expressed  his  opinions  that  the  hands  of  the 
Executive  ought  at  once  to  be  so  strengthened  by  legislative 
action,  that  the  threatened  nullification  could  be  met  by  peace 
ful  means  and  judicial  remedy,  but  that,  if  force  were  ever  re 
sorted  to,  South  Carolina  must  be  the  aggressor.  He  considered 
the  future  stability  of  the  Government  involved  in  this  crisis, 
and  he  had  reason  to  know  that  the  Executive  Department, 
while  desirous,  as  he  was,  to  avoid  the  dire  result  of  civil  war 
by  every  means  that  did  not  sacrifice  the  just  authority  of  the 
Constitution,  had  determined  firmly  to  maintain  that  authority. 

It  is  now  necessary  to  go  back  to  an  earlier  period  in  the 
session,  in  order  to  see  what  had  taken  place  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  on  the  subject  of  the  tariff.  On  the  27th  of 
December,  Mr.  Yerplanck,  of  New  York,  from  the  Commit 
tee  of  Ways  and  Means,  to  which  was  referred  a  part  of  the 
President's  annual  message  relating  to  the  finances  and  to  a 
further  reduction  of  the  revenue,  reported  a  bill  to  reduce 
and  otherwise  alter  the  duties  on  imports.  This  bill  was 
called  up  on  the  8th  of  February,  and  was  under  discus 
sion  in  the  House  when  Mr.  Clay  offered  his  own  bill  in  the 
Senate. 

Mr.  Clay  began  his  speech,  on  the  introduction  of  his  bill, 
by  declaring  it  to  be  his  purpose  to  save  the  tariff,  which  he 
believed  to  be  in  imminent  danger,  and  which,  even  if  it  should 
be  preserved  during  the  present  session,  must,  he  thought,  fall 
at  the  next.  He  therefore  sought,  he  said,  to  find  some  prin 
ciple  of  mutual  accommodation,  in  order  to  satisfy,  as  far  as 
practicable,  both  the  friends  and  the  opponents  of  the  tariff,  to 
increase  the  stability  of  legislation,  and,  at  some  distant  day,  to 
bring  down  the  rate  of  duties  to  that  revenue  standard  for 
which  the  adversaries  of  the  tariff  had  long  contended.  This, 
he  maintained,  was  not  an  abandonment  of  the  constitutional 
power  of  protection,  but  a  suspension  of  it.  If  the  power  and 
the  principle  of  protection  were  to  be  preserved,  it  was  neces 
sary,  he  said,  to  carry  now  some  measure  of  modification,  with 
the  assent  of  all  par  ties;  and  if  that  assent  were  now  yielded, 
the  circumstances  of  the  transaction  would  afford  a  guaranty  that 
future  legislation  would  give  all  the  protection  that  could  be 
reasonably  required.  To  secure  such  a  guaranty,  concessions 


446  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIX. 

must  be  made  on  both  sides ;  and  he  claimed  that  his  measure 
was  founded  on  the  great  principle  of  compromise  which  had 
given  birth  to  the  Constitution  itself,  and  which  had  always 
regulated  the  affairs  of  the  Union. 

Alluding  next  to  the  attitude  of  South  Carolina,  Mr.  Clay 
said  that  at  the  commencement  of  the  session  he  felt  a  very 
strong  repugnance  to  any  legislation  on  this  subject,  believing 
that  South  Carolina  had  arrogantly  demanded  of  Congress  at 
once  to  abandon  a  system  which  had  long  been  the  settled 
policy  of  this  country.  But  he  had  since  found  that  South 
Carolina  was  making  only  an  experiment;  to  prevent  by  a 
course  of  legislation,  not  by  force,  the  execution  of  the  laws  of 
the  Union  within  her  limits,  in  order  to  have  the  question  of 
constitutional  power  determined  by  the  courts.  After  express 
ing  his  belief  that  the  course  of  the  State  was  both  wrong  and 
impracticable,  he  concluded  by  deprecating  strongly  any  action 
by  Congress  at  the  present  session  that  might  plunge  the  coun 
try  into  a  civil  war ;  and,  making  an  eloquent  appeal  to  a 
spirit  of  mutual  forbearance  and  conciliation,  he  asked  leave  to 
introduce  his  bill. 

When  read,  the  bill  was  found  to  contain  the  following  pro 
visions  :  It  proposed  to  enact  that,  on  all  existing  duties  which 
exceeded  twenty  per  cent,  on  the  value  of  the  articles  on  which 
they  were  laid,  the  excess  should  undergo  a  certain  reduction  at 
every  period  of  two  years  until  September  30,  1842,  at  which 
time,  by  the  process  of  reduction,  the  excess  over  twenty  per 
cent,  would  be  extinguished;  that  until  September  30,  1842, 
the  existing  duties,  as  proposed  to  be  modified,  should  be  col 
lected  ;  that  after  that  date  all  duties  upon  imports  should  be 
paid  in  cash,  and  be  laid  for  the  purpose  of  raising  such  revenue 
as  may  be  necessary  to  an  economical  administration  of  the 
Government,  and  that  for  that  purpose  they  should  be  equal 
upon  all  articles  according  to  their  value ;  that  until  otherwise 
directed  by  law,  from  and  after  September  30,  1842,  the  rate 
of  duties  shall  be  twenty  per  cent,  ad  valorem,  reserving,  how 
ever,  power  to  raise  the  rate  in  the  event  of  war  with  any 
foreign  power.  The  bill  also  enlarged  and  modified  the  free 
list,  especially  in  relation  to  raw  materials  and  articles  used  in 
manufactures. 


1833.]  MR.  CLAY'S  COMPROMISE.  447 

Before  the  bill  had  been  formally  read,  however,  but  after 
Mr.  Clay  had  explained  its  provisions,  Mr.  "Webster  rose  and 
said: 

"  That  as,  by  its  title,  the  bill  appeared  to  be  a  bill  merely  to  modify 
the  existing  revenue  laws,  it  could  hardly  be  rejected  as  a  bill  for  raising 
revenue,  which  ought  to  originate  in  the  other  House,  since  there  are  many 
particulars  in  which  all  the  existing  revenue  laws  might  be  modified,  with 
out  raising  more  or  less  revenue.  As  the  bill  has  not  been  read  (said  Mr. 
Webster),  we  seem  to  know  no  more  of  it,  regularly,  than  its  title  purports. 
That  title  describes  a  bill  which  may  constitutionally  originate  in  the  Sen 
ate  ;  I  shall,  therefore,  vote  for  the  leave. 

"  But  I  feel  it  my  duty,  Mr.  President,  to  say  a  word  or  two  upon  the 
measure  itself.  It  is  impossible  that  this  proposition  of  the  honorable 
member  from  Kentucky  should  not  excite  in  the  country  a  very  strong 
sensation ;  and,  in  the  relation  in  which  I  stand  to  the  subject,  I  am  anx 
ious,  at  an  early  moment,  to  say  that,  as  far  as  I  understand  the  bill,  from 
the  gentleman's  statement  of  it,  there  are  principles  in  it  in  which  I  do  not 
at  present  see  how  I  can  ever  concur.  If  I  understand  the  plan,  the  result 
of  it  will  be  a  well-understood  surrender  of  the  power  of  discrimination,  or 
a  stipulation  not  to  use  that  power,  in  the  laying  of  duties  on  imports, 
after  the  eight  or  nine  years  have  expired.  This  appears  to  me  to  be  a 
matter  of  great  moment.  I  hesitate  to  be  a  party  to  any  such  stipulation. 
The  honorable  member  admits  that,  though  there  will  be  no  positive  sur 
render  of  the  power,  there  will  be  a  stipulation  not  to  exercise  it ;  a  treaty 
of  peace  and  amity,  as  he  says,  which  no  American  statesman  can  here 
after  stand  up  to  violate.  I  propose,  so  far  as  depends  on  me,  to  leave  all 
our  successors  in  Congress  as  free  to  act  as  we  are  ourselves. 

"  The  honorable  member  from  Kentucky  says  the  tariff  is  in  imminent 
danger ;  that,  if  not  destroyed  this  session,  it  cannot  hope  to  survive  the 
next.  This  may  be  so,  sir.  This  may  be  so.  But,  if  it  is  so,  it  is  because 
the  American  people  will  not  sanction  the  tariff;  and  if  they  will  not,  why, 
then,  sir,  it  cannot  be  sustained  at  all.  I  am  not  quite  so  despairing  as 
the  honorable  member  seems  to  be.  I  know  nothing  which  has  hap 
pened  within  the  last  six  or  eight  months  changing  so  materially  the 
prospects  of  the  tariff.  I  do  not  despair  of  the  success  of  an  appeal  to 
the  American  people,  to  take  a  just  care  of  their  own  interests,  and  not 
to  sacrifice  those  vast  interests  which  have  grown  up  under  the  laws  of 
Congress. 

"  But,  sir,  out  of  respect  to  the  economy  of  the  time  of  the  Senate,  I 
will  pursue  these  remarks  no  further  at  present ;  but  I  will  take  an  oppor 
tunity  to-morrow  to  lay  on  the  table  resolutions  expressing  my  general 
opinions  on  this  interesting  subject." 

On  the  next  day  (February  13th),  Mr.  Webster  offered  the 
following  resolutions,  which  were  ordered  to  be  printed : 


448  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIX. 

"  Resolved,  That  the  annual  revenues  of  the  country  ought  not  to  be 
allowed  to  exceed  a  just  estimate  of  the  wants  of  the  Government;  and 
that,  as  soon  as  it  shall  "be  ascertained,  with  reasonable  certainty,  that  the 
rates  of  duties  on  imports,  as  established  by  the  act  of  July,  1832,  will 
yield  an  excess  over  those  wants,  provision  ought  to  be  made  for  their 
reduction ;  and  that,  in  making  this  reduction,  just  regard  should  be  had 
to  the  various  interests  and  opinions  of  different  parts  of  the  country,  so 
as  most  effectually  to  preserve  the  integrity  and  harmony  of  the  Union, 
and  to  provide  for  the  common  defence,  and  promote  the  general  welfare 
of  the  whole. 

"  But,  whereas  it  is  certain  that  the  diminution  of  the  rates  of  duties 
on  some  articles  would  increase  instead  of  reducing  the  aggregate  amount 
of  revenue  on  such  articles ;  and  whereas,  in  regard  to  such  articles  as  it  has 
been  the  policy  of  the  country  to  protect,  a  slight  reduction  on  one  might 
produce  essential  injury,  and  even  distress,  to  large  classes  of  the  commu 
nity,  while  another  might  bear  a  larger  reduction  without  any  such  con 
sequences  ;  and  whereas,  also,  there  are  many  articles  the  duties  on  which 
might  be  reduced,  or  altogether  abolished,  without  producing  any  other 
effect  than  the  reduction  of  revenue :  therefore, 

"  Resolved,  That,  in  reducing  the  rates  of  duties  imposed  on  imports  by 
the  act  of  the  14th  of  July  aforesaid,  it  is  not  wise  or  judicious  to  proceed 
by  way  of  an  equal  reduction  per  centum  on  all  articles ;  but  that  as  well 
the  amount  as  the  time  of  reduction  ought  to  be  fixed,  in  respect  to  the 
several  articles,  distinctly,  having  due  regard,  in  each  case,  to  the  ques 
tions  whether  the  proposed  reduction  will  affect  revenue  alone,  or  how  far 
it  will  operate  injuriously  on  those  domestic  manufactures  hitherto  pro 
tected — especially  such  as  are  essential  in  time  of  war,  and  such,  also,  as 
have  been  established  on  the  faith  of  existing  laws — and,  above  all,  how 
far  such  proposed  reduction  will  affect  the  rates  of  wages  and  the  earnings 
of  American  manual  labor. 

"Resolved,  That  it  is  unwise  and  injudicious,  in  regulating  imposts,  to 
adopt  a  plan,  hitherto  equally  unknown  in  the  history  of  this  Government, 
and  in  the  practice  of  all  enlightened  nations,  which  shall,  either  imme 
diately  or  prospectively,  reject  all  discrimination  on  articles  to  be  taxed, 
whether  they  be  articles  of  necessity  or  of  luxury,  of  general  consumption 
or  of  limited  consumption;  and  whether  they  be,  or  be  not,  such  as  are 
manufactured  and  produced  at  home ;  and  which  shall  confine  all  duties 
to  one  equal  rate  per  centum  on  all  articles. 

"Resolved,  That,  since  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  deprived 
the  State  governments  of  all  power  of  fostering  manufactures,  however 
indispensable  in  peace  or  in  war,  or  however  important  to  national  inde 
pendence,  by  commercial  regulations,  or  by  laying  duties  on  imports,  and 
have  transferred  the  whole  authority  to  make  such  regulations,  and  to  lay 
such  duties,  to  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  Congress  cannot  surren 
der  or  abandon  such  power  compatibly  with  its  constitutional  duty ;  and, 
therefore. 


1833.]  MR.  CALHOUN'S  OPINIONS.  449 

"fiesolved,  That  no  law  ought  to  be  passed  on  the  subject  of  imposts, 
containing  any  stipulation,  express  or  implied,  or  giving  any  pledge  or 
assurance,  direct  or  indirect,  which  shall  tend  to  restrain  Congress  from 
the  full  exercise,  at  all  times  hereafter,  of  all  its  constitutional  powers,  in 
giving  reasonable  protection  to  American  industry,  countervailing  the 
policy  of  foreign  nations,  and  maintaining  the  substantial  independence 
of  the  United  States." 

On  the  two  following  days,  Mr.  "Webster  was  prevented,  by 
the  discussion  on  the  "  Force  Bill,"  from  addressing  the  Senate 
on  his  tariff  resolutions.  On  the  15th,  the  "  Force  Bill "  being 
under  consideration,  Mr.  Calhoun  commenced  the  great  speech 
in  which  he  resisted  the  passage  of  that  bill,  developed  his  views 
on  the  nature  of  the  Constitution,  and  the  right  of  State  nullifi 
cation,  as  embodied  in  his  resolutions,  and  explained  the  atti 
tude  taken  by  South  Carolina.  The  doctrine  of  this  very  able 
speech  maintained  the  Union  to  be  a  confederacy  of  sovereign 
States,  in  contradistinction  to  a  consolidated  Government ;  that 
the  States,  being  sovereign — having  reserved  all  powers  not 
granted  to  the  General  Government — reserved  to  themselves, 
among  other  powers,  that  of  judging  of  any  infractions  of  the 
Federal  compact,  which  power,  from  the  necessity  of  the  case, 
could  exist  nowhere  else ;  and  that,  when  a  State,  in  its  sover 
eign  capacity,  has  solemnly  pronounced  an  act  of  the  General 
Government  to  be  unwarranted  by  the  Federal  Constitution, 
the  paramount  allegiance  of  the  citizens  of  the  State  is  due  to 
her  authority,  and  she  stands  between  the  citizen  and  the 
Federal  Government  to  protect  him  from  the  consequences  of 
resistance.  As  an  exposition  of  the  doctrines  of  nullification, 
this  speech  was  of  a  far  higher  order  than  that  of  General 
Hayne,  to  which  Mr.  "Webster  replied  in  1830.  It  was  the 
embodied  result  of  all  Mr.  Calhoun's  political  studies  and  teach 
ings  of  many  years ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  it  sowed 
the  seeds  which  in  another  generation  produced  the  opinions 
that  made  the  right  of  secession  from  the  Union  a  firm  political 
faith,  which  multitudes  of  men  have  sealed  with  their  blood  on 
the  battle-fields  of  a  civil  war.  The  occasion  on  which  the 
speech  was  made  was  the  last  time  when  these  doctrines  came 
prominently  into  discussion  on  the  floor  of  Congress  ;  the  last 
in  which  they  were  to  be  subjected  to  that  forensic  ordeal, 
which  was  to  fix  the  convictions  of  a  majority  of  the  nation  on 
30 


450  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

the  one  side  or  the  other,  before  they  were  to  be,  at  some  un 
known  day,  submitted  to  the  final  and  dread  arbitrament  of 
arms. 

Mr.  "Webster  felt  the  full  importance  of  the  occasion,  but 
he  felt  also  the  great  vantage-ground  he  had  gained  by  the 
debate  of  1830.  His  reply  to  General  Hayne  had  been  accepted 
as  conclusive,  not  merely  by  the  quarter  of  the  country  which 
he  represented,  and  the  political  party  with  which  he  was  con 
nected,  but  by  a  large  part  of  the  people  in  the  Central  and 
Western  States,  and  by  many  of  the  ablest  public  men  in  the 
party  to  which  he  did  not  belong.  Moreover,  the  doctrines 
which  he  then  maintained  respecting  the  Constitution  had  been 
adopted  by  the  President  of  the  United  States  in  the  most  im 
portant  state  paper  that  had  proceeded  from  his  Administra 
tion,  and  had  thus  received  the  full  sanction  of  an  Executive 
who  was  the  head  of  the  largest  and  most  powerful  party  in 
the  Union.  As  might  have  been  expected,  therefore,  the 
speech  in  reply  to  Mr.  Calhoun  was  far  less  rhetorical  than  that 
in  reply  to  Mr.  Hayne.  The  thesis  was  substantially  the  same ; 
but  the  subject  was  not  so  new  as  on  the  former  occasion,  and 
there  was  not  the  same  feverish  anxiety  in  the  public  mind 
respecting  the  result  of  the  debate. 

As  soon  as  Mr.  Calhoun  had  concluded,  Mr.  Webster  rose 
and  delivered  the  speech  which  now  stands  in  the  third  volume 
of  his  works,  under  the  title,  "  The  Constitution  not  a  compact 
between  sovereign  States."  It  comprehended  and  maintained 
the  following  propositions : 

"1.  That  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  not  a  league,  con 
federacy,  or  compact  between  the  people  of  the  several  States  in  their  sov 
ereign  capacities  ;  but  a  government  proper,  founded  on  the  adoption 
of  the  people,  and  creating  direct  relations  between  itself  and  indi 
viduals. 

"  2.  That  no  State  has  authority  to  dissolve  these  relations ;  that 
nothing  can  dissolve  them  but  revolution ;  and  that,  consequently,  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  secession  without  revolution. 

"  3.  That  there  is  a  supreme  law,  consisting  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  and  acts  of  Congress  passed  in  pursuance  of  it,  and  treaties ; 
and  that,  in  cases  not  assuming  the  character  of  a  suit  in  law  or  equity, 
Congress  must  judge  of  and  finally  interpret  this  supreme  law  so  often  as 
it  has  occasion  to  pass  acts  of  legislation ;  and,  in  cases  capable  of  assuin- 


1833.]  MR.  WEBSTER'S  REPLY  TO  MR.  CALHOUN.  451 

ing,  and  actually  assuming,  the  character  of  a  suit,  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  is  the.  final  interpreter. 

"  4.  That  an  attempt  by  a  State  to  abrogate,  annul,  or  nullify  any  act 
of  Congress,  or  to  arrest  its  operation  within  her  limits,  on  the  ground 
that,  in  her  opinion,  such  law  is  unconstitutional,  is  a  direct  usurpation  on 
the  just  powers  of  the  General  Government,  and  on  the  equal  rights  of  the 
States,  a  plain  violation  of  the  Constitution,  and  a  proceeding  essentially 
revolutionary  in  its  character  and  tendency." 

Perhaps  there  is  no  speech  ever  made  by  Mr.  Webster 
that  is  so  close  in  its  reasoning,  so  compact,  and  so  power 
ful.  "Whoever  would  understand  that  theory  of  the  Constitu 
tion  of  the  United  States  which  regards  it  as  the  enact 
ment  of  a  fundamental  law,  must  go  to  this  speech  to 
find  its  best  and  clearest  exposition.  Whoever  would  know 
the  doctrine  that  enabled  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  thirty  years  later,  to  call  forth  the  physical  energies 
of  a  population  strong  enough  to  encounter  and  to  pre 
vent  the  dismemberment  of  this  Union  by  the  secession 
attempted  in  1861,  and  finally  suppressed  in  1865,  must 
find  it  in  the  position  maintained  by  Mr.  Webster  in  1830 
and  1833. 

But  what  was  then  taking  place  in  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States  rendered  it  morally  certain  that  at  some  future  time  this 
great  issue  would  be  transferred  from  the  arena  of  forensic  dis 
cussion  to  the  theatre  of  war.  The  idea  of  putting  into  the 
hands  of  the  Executive  the  means  of  compelling  obedience  to 
the  laws  of  the  Union,  and  at  the  same  time  of  modifying  those 
laws  so  as  to  retract  the  principle  on  which  the  authority  of  the 
Union  had  been  asserted  and  was  now  resisted,  was  regarded 
by  Mr.  Webster  in  a  very  different  light  from  that  in  which  it 
presented  itself  to  Mr.  Clay.  Gifted  with  powers  of  persuasion 
that  have  rarely  been  excelled  by  any  statesman  in  our  annals, 
that  distinguished  person  embraced  with  eagerness  the  part  of 
a  pacificator,  and  was  led  on  by  the  captivating  thought  that 
he  could  put  an  end  to  all  future  dangers  by  removing  the 
causes  of  present  discontents.  This  is  a  mode  of  action,  in  free 
governments,  which  has  succeeded,  and  has  failed,  according  to 
the  degree  in  which  essential  principles  have  been  preserved,  or 
relaxed,  in  dealing  with  factious  resistance.  It  is  a  mode  of 


452  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

action  in  respect  to  which  statesmen  of  equal  purity  and  patriot 
ism  will  differ,  according  to  their  estimate  of  what  is  involved 
in  present  concessions,  and  of  what  will  remain  for  the  assertion 
and  vindication  of  authority  in  future.  Between  Mr.  Webster 
and  Mr.  Clay,  on  this  occasion,  there  was  precisely  such  a  dif 
ference.  Posterity  must  judge,  will  judge,  the  motives  of  each 
of  them,  with  equal  liberality.  The  one  aimed  at  a  great  set 
tlement  of  an  immediate  difficulty,  by  calling  on  the  contend 
ing  parties  to  make  mutual  sacrifices.  The  other  believed  that 
the  proposed  settlement  surrendered  fatally  a  principle  of 
the  Constitution.  It  was  not  the  reduction  of  duties  to  which 
Mr.  Webster  objected ;  it  was  to  the  effort  to  bind  the  Govern 
ment  not  to  exercise  the  power  of  discrimination  in  raising  its 
revenues  on  imports,  and  to  the  enactment  of  such  a  stipulation 
in  the  face  of  a  threatened  resistance  to  an  important  constitu 
tional  power,  which  Mr.  Clay  held  to  be  as  clear  as  Mr.  Web 
ster  or  any  one  else.  How  far  Mr.  Webster  had  grounds  for 
his  opinion,  will  be  seen  from  the  further  history  of  this  mem 
orable  discussion  and  its  consequences. 

The  discussion  between  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr.  Webster 
would  seem  to  have  convinced  Mr.  Clay  that  a  vote  from  him 
against  the  passage  of  the  "  Force  Bill "  would  be  unbecoming. 
He  would  not  speak  in  its  favor,  and  he  so  declared  in  the  Sen 
ate.  While  he  admitted  that  such  a  law  might  with  propriety 
be  upon  the  statute-book,  he  declined  to  vote  for  it.  It  was 
finally  passed  on  the  20th  of  February.1 

The  previous  action  of  the  Senate  on  Mr.  Clay's  bill  to 
modify  the  tariff  act  of  1832  had  resulted,  on  the  13th  of  Feb 
ruary,  in  referring  it  to  a  select  committee,  of  which  Mr.  Clay 
was  chairman.  On  the  19th,  it  was  reported  with  amendments. 
On  the  21st,  the  amendments  were  adopted  by  the  Senate.  On 
the  22d,  on  motion  of  Mr.  Clay,  the  principle  of  home  valuation 
was  added,  and  on  the  24th  the  bill  was  engrossed.  Before  this 
occurred,  Mr.  Webster  had  suggested  that  it  was  not  a  bill  that 
could  originate  in  the  Senate,  as  it  was  a  money  bill,  whether 
it  increased  or  diminished  the  revenue.  Mr.  Clay  combated 

1  Mr.  Tyler,  of  Virginia,  alone  re-  hour  of  the  evening  session  on  the  20th. 

corded  his  vote  against  the  passage  of  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr.  Clay  withdrew  from 

this  bill.     The  votes  in  its  favor  were  the  Senate  before  the  final  vote  was 

thirty-two.     The  vote  was  taken  at  a  late  taken  on  the  bill. 


1833.]  OPPOSES  THE  COMPROMISE.  453 

tliis  position,  and  regretted  that  there  should  be  any  disposition 
to  oppose  a  measure  of  conciliation  and  compromise.  On  the 
25th,  the  question  being  on  the  final  passage  of  the  bill,  Mr. 
Webster  addressed  the  Senate  in  opposition  to  it. 

Of  this  speech,  there  is  but  a  meagre  account  remaining. 
The  reason  that  led  Mr.  Webster  to  refrain  from  putting  it 
afterward  into  a  full  report  will  be  seen  hereafter.  But  enough 
remains  to  inform  us  that  he  resisted  its  passage  upon  the  fol 
lowing  grounds :  First,  that  it  undertook  to  bind  future  Con 
gresses,  in  respect  to  the  measure  of  protection  to  be  given  to 
domestic  manufactures.  Second,  because  it  reduced  the  duties 
on  the  protected  articles  below  twenty  per  cent,  ad  valorem, 
while  it  prohibited  their  being  raised  above  that  rate.  Third, 
because  it  surrendered,  and  would  be  claimed  to  have  surren 
dered,  the  constitutional  power  of  protection.  Fourth,  because 
it  gave  up  specific  duties,  and  adopted  a  system  of  valuations, 
which  he  regarded  as  objectionable.  Practically,  he  contended 
that  this  measure  surrendered  the  interests  of  all  the  smaller 
capitalists,  and  made  concessions  in  favor  of  the  overgrown 
monopolists.  As  a  measure  of  finance,  he  considered  it  in 
efficient,  and  did  not  anticipate  that  it  would  be  acquiesced  in 
as  a  permanent  settlement.  With  respect  to  the  attitude  of 
South  Carolina,  he  said  that,  if  her  object  was  merely  to  enter 
into  a  law-suit  with  the  United  States,  there  was  no  necessity 
for  this  sacrifice  of  great  interests.  In  conclusion,  he  said  that, 
when  the  point  of  necessary  revenue  should  become  known,  any 
Congress  would  be  able  to  make  a  tariff  that  would  suit  the 
country,  if  the  constitutional  power  to  discriminate  were  not 
given  up. 

Mr.  Clay  closed  the  discussion,  in  reply  to  Mr.  Webster, 
and  enforced  the  passage  of  the  bill  in  an  impassioned  and 
eloquent  speech.  On  the  26th,  the  Senate  bill  being  still 
pending,  Mr.  Clay  suggested  that  the  House  of  Kepresenta- 
tives  had  just  then  passed  a  similar  bill,  and,  as  this  would 
obviate  the  constitutional  objection  to  his  own  bill,  the  Sen 
ate,  on  his  motion,  adjourned. 

What  had  occurred  in  the  House  of  Representatives  was  the 
introduction,  by  Mr.  Letcher,  of  the  same  bill  then  pending  in 
the  Senate.  It  was  passed  rapidly  through  the  forms  of  the 


454  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

House,  without  the  allowance  of  amendments,  and,  on  the  26th, 
was  sent  to  the  Senate  for  its  concurrence. 

On  that  day  Mr.  Calhoun  called  up  his  resolutions  on  the 
nature  and  power  of  the  Government,  and  commenced  an  elabo 
rate  reply  to  Mr.  Webster,  reasserting  the  doctrines  of  State 
nullification.  Mr.  Webster  immediately  rejoined,  terminating 
the  discussion  as  follows : 

"  Mr.  President,  turn  this  question  over,  and  present  it  as  we  will — 
argue  it  as  we  may — exhaust  upon  it  all  the  fountains  of  metaphysics — 
stretch  over  it  all  the  meshes  of  logical  or  political  subtlety — it  still  comes 
to  this:  Shall  we  have  a  General  Government?  Shall  we  continue  the 
union  of  the  States  under  a  Government,  instead  of  a  league  f  This  is  the 
upshot  of  the  whole  matter ;  because,  if  we  are  to  have  a  Government,  that 
Government  must  act  like  other  governments,  by  majorities  ;  it  must  have 
this  power,  like  other  governments,  of  enforcing  its  own  laws  and  its  own 
decisions ;  clothed  with  authority  by  the  people,  and  always  responsible  to 
the  people  ;  it  must  be  able  to  hold  its  course,  unchecked  by  external  in 
terposition.  According  to  the  gentleman's  views  of  the  matter,  the  Con 
stitution  is  a  league ;  according  to  mine,  it  is  a  regular  popular  Government. 
This  vital  and  all-important  question  the  people  will  decide,  and,  in  deciding 
it,  they  will  determine  whether,  by  ratifying  the  present  CONSTITUTION  AND 
FRAME  OF  GOVERNMENT,  they  meant  to  do  nothing  more  than  to  amend 
the  articles  of  the  old  Confederation." 

The  Compromise  Tariff  Bill  finally  passed  the  Senate  on  the 
1st  day  of  March,  Mr.  Webster,  with  fifteen  other  Senators, 
voting  against  it.1 

In  1838,  Mr.  Webster  wrote  the  following  private  letters  to 
a  friend,  for  the  purpose  of  explaining  his  own  course  on  this 
subject,  and  in  order  that  there  might  remain  a  permanent 
record  of  his  sentiments  in  regard  to  it — sentiments  which  I 
happen  to  know  he  never  changed : 

[TO  MR.   KETCHUM.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Monday  Morning,  January  IS, 1838. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  In  December,  1832,  on  my  way  to  Washington,  I  fell  in 
with  Mr.  Clay  at  Philadelphia.  He  then  told  me  he  had  conceived  a 
plan  for  quieting  the  tariff  question,  which  he  would  communicate  to  me 
when  we  should  reach  Washington.  In  the  early  part  of  the  session  I 
learned  what  the  plan  was.  It  was  first  explained  to  me  by  Mr.  Letcher, 
to  whom  I  expressed  my  astonishment  at  hearing  of  any  intention,  by  Mr. 

1  The  votes  in  its  favor  were  twenty-nine. 


1833.]  MR.  CLAY'S  COMPROMISE.  455 

Clay,  to  bring  forward  such  a  proposition.  It  was  a  good  deal  talked 
over,  privately,  among  friends.  Mr.  Clay  put  the  proposed  bill  into  the 
hands  of  Mr.  Davis,  rny  present  colleague,  then  in  the  House  of  Eepre- 
sentatives.  Mr.  Davis  handed  it  to  nie,  in  Mr.  Clay's  handwriting,  and  I 
copied  it ;  and  that  copy  you  have.  When  the  bill  was  afterward  intro 
duced,  those  words  which  you  speak  of  were  left  out.  The  bill  was  dis 
cussed  in  the  Senate,  referred  to  a  committee  (of  which  I  was  one),  and 
again  reported  to  the  Senate ;  and  it  became  understood  that  it  would 
pass  the  Senate.  I  had,  however,  suggested  that  it  was  not  a  bill  which 
could  constitutionally  originate  in  the  Senate ;  and,  this  opinion  appear 
ing  to  gain  ground,  the  proceeding  in  the  Senate  stopped  all  at  once,  and 
Mr.  Letcher  introduced  the  measure  into  the  House,  had  it  referred  to  the 
Committee  of  the  Whole,  as  the  rules  require,  ~but  with  instructions  to 
report  the  same  Mil,  without  amendment,  J)ack  to  the  House.  This  was  done 
accordingly ;  the  bill  immediately  passed ;  came  to  the  Senate,  and  passed 
there  also.  In  a  day  or  two  I  will  send  you  a  copy  of  the  bill,  as  Mr.  Clay 
first  introduced  it  into  the  Senate,  and  such  other  facts,  from  the  journals, 
as  may  place  you  in  possession  of  the  exact  history  of  the  bill.  But  if  you 
will  look  at  the  law,  as  it  now  stands,  you  will  find  that  it  completely 
negatives  all  idea  of  protection : 

1.  Because  it  expressly  confines  revenue  to  the  wants  of  Government. 

2.  Because  it  expressly  rejects  discrimination,  which  is  the  only  true 
and  practical  mode  of  protection. 

Yours  truly, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 
"  Mr.  Ketchum." 


[TO  MR.   KETCHUM.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  20, 1838. 

MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  enclose  you  a  copy  of  Mr.  Clay's  bill,  in  1833,  as 
originally  prepared  by  him.  The  copy  was  made  by  me,  from  the  original, 
in  Mr.  Clay's  own  handwriting.  Some  alterations  took  place  before  the 
measure  was  formally  brought  forward,  as  others,  during  its  progress  in 
Congress.  Nevertheless,  if  you  examine  the  law,  it  is  now,  in  truth,  an 
attempt  by  Congress  to  surrender  the  protecting  power,  and  strike  it  out 
of  the  Constitution.  I  opposed  this  bill  in  every  stage,  and  so  did  three- 
fourths  of  the  tariff  interest  in  both  Houses.  All  the  South  went  for  it ; 
Mr.  Clay's  personal  friends  went  for  it,  and  a  few  good  men  from  the 
North  and  the  Centre,  from  various  motives,  went  for  it  also ;  for  example, 
Mr.  Bell,  of  New  Hampshire,  and  Mr.  Frelinghuysen. 

"  The  bill  passed  at  the  end  of  the  session.  I  took  my  notes,  etc., 
along  with  me,  and,  staying  a  day  or  two  at  Philadelphia,  sat  down  to 
write  out  my  speech  at  length.  A  friend  happened  to  come  in,  and,  find 
ing  out  what  I  was  about,  dissuaded  me  from  it.  He  said  the  act  was 
done,  the  thing  was  settled ;  and  the  publication  of  my  speech  would  only 


456  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

prove  a  wide  difference  to  exist  among  friends.  I  acquiesced,  which  I 
have  ever  since  regretted.  When  I  reached  New  York,  I  had  conversation 
on  the  subject  with  Mr.  C.  King.  I  left  with  Mm  my  notes.  I  wish  they 
could  now  be  had.  I  think  he  once  told  me  he  could  lay  his  hands 
on  them.  This  copy  of  Mr.  Clay's  original  proposition  I  wish  you  to 
preserve.  I  can  send  you,  if  you  wish  it,  a  list  of  ayes  and  noes 
on  the  passage  of  the  bill  in  both  Houses.  All  Massachusetts  went 
against  it. 

"  Yours  truly, 

WEBSTER." 


The  Ordinance  of  South  Carolina,  which  undertook  to  nullify 
the  revenue  laws  of  the  United  States,  was  never  repealed.  That 
State  rested  satisfied,  as  Mr.  Webster  said  she  would,  with  what 
she  had  gained  ;  satisfied  that  she  had  extorted  from  Congress  at 
least  a  suspension  of  the  power  to  discriminate  in  favor  of  domes 
tic  manufactures  when  levying  duties  on  foreign  merchandise. 
When  it  is  remembered  that  this  concession  was  contemporane 
ous  with  the  assertion  on  the  floor  of  Congress  of  the  doctrine  of 
State  nullification,  we  can  see  that  the  public  men  who  ruled 
the  action  of  South  Carolina  had  no  reason  for  regarding  the  pas 
sage  of  the  "  Force  Bill  "  as  a  defeat,  and  no  special  cause  for 
putting  that  measure  to  the  test  of  execution.  As  years  flowed 
on,  the  teachings  of  Mr.  Calhoun  became  the  political  creed  of 
her  rising  youth.  They  led  directly  to  the  belief  in  the  right  of 
State  secession  from  the  Union  —  a  belief  that,  in  the  succeeding 
generation  of  public  men  in  the  South,  spread  far  beyond  her 
own  limits.  Had  she  been  told  by  the  unanimous  voice  of  the 
country,  as  represented  in  Congress,  that  no  concessions  could 
be  made  to  her  menaces,  we  cannot  now  say  that  the  theory 
of  nullification  and  its  cognate  doctrines  would  not  have  con 
tinued  to  have  advocates  and  followers.  But  it  is  not  probable 
that  such  a  theory  could  have  attained  the  proportions  which  it 
afterward  reached,  or  that  it  would  ever  have  culminated,  as  it 
did  at  the  end  of  another  quarter  of  a  century,  in  an  attempted 
disruption  of  the  ties  that  bound  the  Southern  States  to  the 
Union.  In  seeking  for  the  explanation  of  revolutionary  move 
ments,  we  are  too  apt  to  regard  them  as  inevitable,  and  to  con 
sider  that  they  have  flowed  from  events  and  causes  independent 
of  the  conduct  of  men  and  parties.  But  all  who  would  under 
stand  Mr.  Webster's  opinions  on  this  momentous  subject,  or  who 


1833.]  NULLIFICATION.  457 

would  do  him  justice — all  who  may  be  inclined  to  think  that 
he  leaned  on  this  occasion  too  strongly  to  the  side  of  authority, 
and  too  little  to  the  side  of  conciliation — must  endeavor  to 
stand  where  he  stood,  and  to  look,  as  he  looked,  into  the 
future.  They  must  recognize  what  presented  itself  to  his  con 
victions  ;  which  was  no  less  than  the  certainty  that  the  South 
ern  quarter  of  the  Union  would  not  alone  be  the  theatre  of  fac 
tious  resistance  to  law ;  that  the  day  would  come  when  that 
section  would  have  cause  to  invoke  and  depend  upon  the  same 
principle  of  supremacy  in  the  Constitution  which  he  had  now 
so  signally  displayed  and  vindicated ;  and  that,  if  this  principle 
were  weakened  now,  the  character  of  the  Government,  at 
some  distant  day,  would  have  to  be  asserted  by  more  than  the 
power  of  argument.  All,  too,  who  would  rightly  estimate  his 
subsequent  career,  must  learn  how  this  occurrence  threw  upon 
him,  afterward,  the  necessity,  in  following  out  his  constitu 
tional  principles,  of  encountering  the  popular  feeling  of  his 
own  community,  when  it  arrayed  itself  in  opposition  to  the 
just  authority  of  the  fundamental  law.  He  now  saw,  or  be 
lieved  that  he  saw,  that  authority  remitted  to  an  uncertain 
future,  in  which  the  prevalence  of  error  would  be  wider,  the 
motives  for  discontent  would  be  multiplied,  and  the  love  of  the 
Union  would  be  enfeebled.  For  the  exigencies  of  that  hour, 
which  he  always  feared  was  in  store  for  us,  he  made  all  the 

«/ 

preparation  that  any  human  intellect  could  make,  by  the  main 
tenance  and  elucidation  of  the  principles  on  which  he  believed 
that  the  political  institutions  of  this  country  rest.  He  was 
never  called  to  look  upon  that  scene  of  fraternal  strife  in 
which  those  principles  had  to  be  enforced  in  the  shock  of 
armies.  He  prayed  that  such  a  scene  might  never  open  on 
his  vision  ;  and  his  prayer  was  heard.  But  he  always  feared 
that  it  would  come,  and  it  did  come. 

[TO  MR.   PERRY,   OF  SOUTH   CAROLINA.] 

"  BOSTON,  April  10, 1833. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  was  gratified  by  the  receipt  of  your  letter  of  the 
1st  of  this  month,  and  thank  you  for  the  favorable  and  friendly  sentiments 
which  you  express  in  regard  to  an  effort  of  mine,  at  the  late  session  of 
Congress,  in  a  cause  which  I  deemed  all-important  to  the  country,  and  to 


458  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTEK.  [Cn.  XIX. 

which  I  had  already  learned  you  were  as  much  devoted  as  myself.  I  am 
not  at  all  surprised,  my  dear  sir,  at  the  opinions  you  express,  as  to  the 
ultimate  object  of  those  who  have  raised  the  flag  of  nullification.  Circum 
stances,  full  of  meaning,  attracted  my  attention  to  it  early ;  and,  in  De 
cember,  1828, 1  became  thoroughly  convinced  that  the  plan  of  a  Southern 
Confederacy  had  been  received  with  favor  by  a  great  many  of  the  political 
men  of  the  South,  especially  of  your  State. 

"  I  agree  with  you  also  entirely  in  the  opinion  that  the  danger  is 
not  over.  A  systematic  and  bold  attack,  now  but  just  begun,  will  be 
carried  on,  I  apprehend,  against  the  just  and  constitutional  powers  of 
the  Government,  and  against  whatsoever  strengthens  the  Union  of  the 
States. 

"  For  my  own  part,  I  look  forward  to  an  animated  controversy  on 
these  points  for  years  to  come ;  and  if  we  can  sustain  our  side  of  the  con 
troversy,  my  dear  sir,  with  success,  as  I  hope  and  believe  we  may,  we  shall 
transmit  to  posterity  an  inheritance  above  all  price. 

"  I  do  not  apprehend  any  further  difficulty  with  Georgia.  There  was 
not  the  slightest  reference  to  the  Georgia  case  in  my  mind,  or  ever,  as  far 
as  I  know,  in  that  of  any  other  gentleman,  in  preparing  and  passing  the 
bill  for  the  better  collection  of  the  revenue.  It  is  true  that  some  of  the 
provisions  of  the  bill  ought,  in  my  judgment,  to  be  permanent.  If  they 
had  previously  existed,  the  idea  of  putting  the  doctrines  of  nullification 
in  practice,  in  the  mode  recently  adopted  at  least,  would  probably  not 
have  been  entertained.  I  have  expected  what  I  see  now  publicly  an 
nounced,  that  the  effort  will  be  to  repeal  this  law  so  soon  as  Congress 
shall  assemble. 

"  It  is  probably  expected  that,  since  the  occasion  has  passed  by,  many 
will  be  willing  to  repeal  the  law,  although  they  were  in  favor  of  its  pas 
sage  at  the  time ;  and  it  is  hoped  that,  by  the  repeal  of  this  act,  it  may  be 
considered  as  decided  that  Congress  is  hereafter  to  take  no  step  to  execute 
any  laws  which  are  resisted  by  State  authority. 

"  The  high  regard  which  I  feel  for  the  patriotic  gentlemen  with  whom 
you  act  in  your  State,  and  the  respect  which  I  have  been  led  to  entertain 
for  yourself,  induce  me,  my  dear  sir,  to  express  a  wish  to  hear  from  you, 
on  the  interesting  subjects  which  at  present  occupy  the  public  attention, 
whenever  your  convenience  may  allow. 

"  With  friendly  salutations,  I  remain, 

"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"  DASTL.  WEBSTEK." 

The  reader  may  now  turn  from  these  public  events,  in  which 
Mr.  "Webster  performed  so  conspicuous  and  important  a  part,  to 
the  following  letter  from  his  daughter,  at  this  time  of  the  age 
of  sixteen,  written  with  much  of  the  father's  admirable  sim 
plicity  and  correctness  of  style — a  style  which  he  may  be  said 


1833.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  459 

to  have  imparted  to  all  his  children,  for  Fletcher,  Julia,  and 
Edward,  all  wrote  through  life  the  same  unaffected  and  easy 
English  that  belonged  to  him.  The  mention  of  her  brother 

&  o 

Fletcher's  "  part "  at  "  exhibition "  relates  to  a  college  per 
formance.  He  was  graduated  from  Harvard  College  in  the 
autumn  of  this  year  : 


[FROM  MISS  JULIA  WEBSTER.] 

"  BOSTON,  March  3, 1833. 

"MY  DEAR  FATHER:  I  received  your  beautiful  present  a  few  days 
since,  and  was  very  much  pleased  with  it.  I  think  it  contains  some  very 
fine  faces,  and  I  like  the  stories  much  better  than  those  usually  found  in 
"souvenirs"  or  "annuals."  Your  letter  preceded  it  a  few  days,  and  I 
beg  you,  my  dearest  father,  to  accept  your  little  daughter's  best  thanks 
for  them  both. 

"  I  am  staying  with  Cousin  Eliza,  and  am  passing  my  time  most  pleas 
antly.  I  find  it  very  convenient  as  regards  my  school,  as  I  am  never  late 
now,  which  used  sometimes  to  be  the  case.  I  have  not  commenced  any 
new  study  since  I  last  wrote  you.  I  think  I  should  like  to  study  Italian 
very  much,  as  I  have  not  much  to  do. 

"  I  hope  we  shall  soon  see  you  in  Boston,  as  Congress  has  risen ;  and 
we  are  very  anxious  to  see  you  at  home  once  more.  Although  spring  has 
in  reality  begun,  you  would  not  imagine  it  to  be  so  by  the  weather,  which 
is  intensely  cold ;  the  ground  is  covered  with  snow,  and  the  thermometer 
last  night  was  eleven  degrees  below  zero. 

"  Fletcher  dined  with  us  yesterday,  it  being  Saturday.  I  suppose  you 
have  heard  he  is  to  have  a  part  at  the  next  exhibition.  Dr.  and  Mrs. 
Kirkland  dined  here  to-day ;  the  latter  had,  as  usual,  a  good  deal  to  say. 
I  saw  Edward  yesterday ;  he  was  very  well. 

"  I  went,  on  Wednesday,  with  Cousin  Eliza  to  hear  a  lecture  on  hiero 
glyphics,  delivered  by  Mr.  J.  Pickering.  It  was  very  interesting ;  but  he 
did  not  tell  us  as  much  upon  the  principal  subject  as  I  should  have  liked 
to  have  heard.  A  considerable  part  of  it  was  upon  the  necessity  of  atten 
tion,  which  he  addressed  principally  to  his  younger  hearers. 

"  I  heard  two  very  good  sermons  to  day  from  Mr.  Greenwood,  one  of 
which  I  shall  make  an  abstract  of  for  my  composition.  It  was  upon  the 
resignation  of  the  Shunamitish  woman  when  she  lost  her  only  son. 
Cousin  Eliza  says  she  wishes  you  would  come  home,  for  she  thinks  if  you 
were  here  we  should  not  think  any  more  of  the  snow  or  the  cold,  for  it 
would  make  sunshine  in  Boston.  She  also  unites  with  me  in  a  great  deal 
of  love  to  you ;  and,  believe  me  ever,  dear  father, 

"  Your  affectionate  daughter, 

"  JULIA  WEBSTER." 


460  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIX. 

[TO  MISS  JULIA  WEBSTER.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  March  9, 1833. 

"  MY  DEAR  DAUGHTER  :  I  have  this  moment  received  your  letter  of  the 
3d  instant.  It  is  so  kind  and  good  a  letter  that  I  will  not  omit  for  a 
moment  to  answer  it,  although  I  am  expecting  a  summons  to  go  directly 
into  court.  Notwithstanding  your  mother's  absence,  I  have  felt  quite 
easy  about  you  since  I  learned  you  were  to  spend  your  time  at  Cousin 
Eliza's.  Everybody  is  happy  where  she  is. 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  Fletcher  has  a  part  at  exhibition.  You  do  not 
mention  the  time ;  I  fear  it  will  be  before  I  get  home. 

"We  have  the  same  cold  weather  here,  at  least  in  some  degree,  of 
which  you  speak.  The  last  ten  days  have  been  the  severest  part  of  the 
winter.  Some  signs  of  relenting  begin  now  to  appear. 

"  I  heard  yesterday  from  your  mother  in  New  York.  I  have  written 
her,  preferring  that  she  should  meet  me  in  Philadelphia,  as  I  shall  be 
obliged  to  stay  there  on  business  for  a  day  or  two. 

"  The  court  will  rise  about  the  fifteenth,  and,  by  the  end  of  next  week, 
say  by  the  sixteenth,  I  hope  to  take  leave  of  Washington. 

"  I  must  pray  you  to  remember  me  most  kindly  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lee. 
Give  my  love  also  to  Edward  and  to  Uncle  Paige  and  Aunt  Harriette,  not 
forgetting  the  amiable  Miss  Paige. 

"Adieu,  my  dear  daughter. 

"  Ever  your  most  affectionate  father, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

Mr.  Webster  returned  to  Boston  at  about  the  middle  of 
April,  to  make  preparation  for  his  long-intended  journey  to  the 
"West.  He  soon  heard,  however,  of  General  Jackson's  proposed 
visit  to  the  Eastern  States,  and  was  a  good  deal  embarrassed  by 
the  probability  of  his  own  absence  from  Boston  at  the  time  of 
the  President's  arrival.  He  wrote  to  General  Cass,  the  Sec 
retary  of  War,  to  explain  the  cause  of  his  intended  absence, 
from  whom  he  received  the  following  answer,  and  to  whom  he 
wrote  again  in  reply : 

[FROM  GENERAL  CASS.] 

"WASHINGTON,  April  17, 1833. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR:  I  have  just  received  your  kind  letter,  and  sincerely 
thank  you  for  your  recollection  of  me.  I  think  the  President  will  visit 
New  England  this  season ;  if  he  does,  he  will  leave  here  about  the  first  of 
May,  and  he  is  desirous  that  I  should  accompany  him.  I  shall  accordingly 
do  so  ;  and  I  presume  we  shall  be  in  Boston  not  far  from  the  20th  of  June. 


1833.]  JOURNEY  TO    THE  WEST.  461 

I  cannot  ask  you  to  postpone  your  intended  journey  till  after  this  time,  as 
it  might  expose  you  to  much  inconvenience.  Still,  I  will  confess  to  you 
that  the  hope  of  meeting  you,  and  of  revisiting  with  you  the  scenes  and 
friends  of  our  youth,  has  dwelt  upon  my  mind  since  we  first  conversed 
together  on  the  subject.  Nothing  could  give  me  greater  pleasure  than 
such  an  occasion  ;  and,  if  more  pressing  engagements  should  require  your 
absence  at  the  time  I  have  mentioned,  I  shall  look  forward  at  a  future  day 
to  realize  this  hope. 

"  With  sincere  regard,  I  am,  my  dear  sir, 

"  Truly  your  friend, 

"LEWIS  CASS." 

[TO  GENERAL  CASS.] 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  received  your  letter  of  the  17th  instant.  A 
journey  to  the  West  has  long  been  in  contemplation  by  me,  but  I  have  not 
yet  been  able  to  accomplish  it.  Every  other  year  the  session  of  Congress 
has  been  so  far  protracted  as  to  forbid  the  undertaking  for  that  season,  and 
professional  duties  have  allowed  me  no  leisure,  hitherto,  in  the  intervening 
years.  In  addition  to  these  causes,  the  political  state  of  things  has,  for 
some  time,  been  such  that  the  motive  and  objects  of  such  a  tour  would 
have  been  very  likely  to  be  misinterpreted  and  misunderstood. 

"  In  this  last  respect,  the  present  moment  seems  favorable ;  and,  as 
I  have  found  myself  able  to  make  the  necessary  arrangements  with  my 
professional  engagements,  I  have  thought  it  not  well  to  defer  longer  the 
execution  of  that  which  has  been  already  a  good  while  postponed. 

"  Nevertheless,  I  am  very  unwilling  to  miss  your  visit  to  New  England ; 
and,  although  I  might  even  make  that  sacrifice  in  the  hope  that  you  would, 
as  you  suggest,  hereafter  repeat  your  visit,  I  still  feel  great  reluctance  in 
being  from  home  when  the  President  comes  to  Massachusetts.  In  the  first 
place,  it  would  give  me  pleasure  to  see  him,  and  to  extend  to  him  and  his 
party  the  hospitalities  of  my  house,  as  well  as  to  unite  with  my  friends  and 
neighbors  in  such  manifestations  of  respect  as  are  due  to  him ;  and,  in  the 
next  place,  my  absence  on  such  an  occasion,  when  it  was  known  that  a  visit 
from  him  to  this  part  of  the  country  was  intended,  may  be  liable  to  much 
misconstruction. 

"  I  am  inclined,  therefore,  at  all  events,  to  be  at  home  by  the  time  the 
President  reaches  Boston.  My  plan  has  been  to  return  by  the  1st  of  July, 
if  I  shall  not  be  able  to  accomplish  all  I  intend,  and  return  earlier  than  that 
day.  But,  under  present  circumstances,  I  shall  abridge  -the  extent  of  my 
travels,  so  as  to  be  able  to  return  to  Boston  by  the  20th  of  June. 

"  D.  W." 

Mr.  "Webster  arrived  at  Albany,  accompanied  by  his  wife 
and  daughter,  and  by  his  friend  Mr.  Stephen  "White,  in  the 
latter  part  of  May.  Agriculture  was,  as  I  have  said,  one  of  his 


462  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

passions ;  and  at  Albany  he  was  a  delighted  visitor  of  the  cele 
brated  farm  of  Mr.  Buel.  From  Albany  the  ladies  returned  to 
Boston,  and  Mr.  "Webster  went  on  his  way  to  the  West.  On  the 
4th  of  June  he  was  at  Utica,  where  all  political  distinctions  were 
forgotten  by  the  citizens  in  their  manifestations  of  respect  to  this 
great  man,  whom  few  could  have  ever  before  seen,  and  whom 
all  were  anxious  to  honor.  He  tarried  long  enough  in  the  rich 
valley  of  the  Genesee  to  examine  and  enjoy  its  magnificent  agri 
culture,  strongly  contrasting  with  that  of  less  fertile  New  Eng 
land.  On  his  arrival  at  Buffalo  he  was  invited  to  a  public  din 
ner,  but  declined  it,  preferring  an  unrestrained  and  unceremo 
nious  intercourse  with  the  citizens  of  the  place.  He  was  present 
at  the  launching  of  a  steamboat  that  was  to  be  called  by  his 
name,  and  the  local  courts  that  were  in  session  at  the  time  were 
adjourned  in  honor  of  the  event.  Here,  too,  he  received  an  ad 
dress  from  the  mechanics  and  manufacturers,  to  which  he  replied 
in  some  remarks  expressing  his  views  of  the  tariff  policy.  At 
Columbus  he  declined  another  public  dinner,  but  at  Cincinnati 
he  was  obliged  to  accept  one  that  was  tendered  to  him  by  a  gen 
eral  meeting  of  the  citizens,  held  at  the  Exchange  on  the  15th 
of  June.  The  dinner  took  place  a  few  days  afterward.  The 
toast  expressed  the  feelings  of  a  great  company  of  intelligent 
persons  toward  "  the  profound  expounder  of  the  Constitution, 
the  eloquent  supporter  of  the  Federal  Union,  and  the  uniform 
friend  and  advocate  of  the  Western  country."  Mr.  "Webster 
spoke  in  reply  for  more  than  an  hour,  but  the  speech  is  not 
preserved. 

At  Cincinnati,  invitations  of  the  most  earnest  kind  poured 
in  upon  him  from  the  surrounding  States.  But  it  was  impos 
sible  for  him  to  go  farther.  The  cholera  was  then  prevailing 
in  many  of  the  Western  towns,  and  the  season  was  so  far 
advanced  that  he  deemed  it  prudent  to  return  through  Penn 
sylvania.  Before  he  left  Cincinnati,  he  received  the  subjoined 
cordial  letter  from  Mr.  Clav : 


[FKOM  ME.  CLAY.] 

"  ASHLAND,  lltk  June,  1833. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :    The  mail  brought  me  to-day  your  letter  of  the 
10th,  from  Columbus,  and  also  the  intelligence  of  your  safe  arrival  in 


1833.]  JOURNEY  TO   THE  WEST.  463 

Cincinnati.    I  had  been  tracing  in  the  papers  your  progress  with  much 
interest. 

"  I  regret  extremely  that  you  should  find  us,  in  so  many  places,  suffering 
with  cholera.  Its  visit  to  Lexington  has  been  frightful.  Its  mortality 
there  has  been  exceeded  in  degree  at  no  other  point  in  the  United  States, 
New  Orleans,  perhaps,  excepted.  The  shops  and  stores  and  principal  hotel 
have  been  all  closed.  The  pestilence,  within  the  two  or  three  last  days, 
has  considerably  declined,  and  in  a  few  more  will,  I  think,  have  disap 
peared.  Happily,  in  a  family  of  about  sixty,  we  have  as  yet  sustained  no 
loss,  and  are  not  sure  that  we  have  had  one  case  of  genuine  cholera. 

"  I  shall  be  mortified  and  disappointed  if  you  do  not  visit  Kentucky  and 
Lexington ;  but  I  hardly  know  how  to  advise  you.  You  will  certainly  go 
to  Louisville,  where  there  is  no  danger.  At  that  place  daily  intelligence  is 
received  from  Lexington,  and  you  can  hear  whether  there  has  been  such  an 
abatement  of  the  cholera  as  to  enable  you  to  visit  us  without  hazard.  I 
hope  the  state  of  things  will  admit  of  your  coming,  and  I  request  that  you 
and  Mr.  White  will  come  directly  to  Ashland,  and  any  other  gentlemen,  if 
there  be  any  other  in  your  party,  where,  judging  from  the  past,  you  will  be 
secure,  if  the  disease  should  even  continue  to  prevail  at  Lexington.  It  is 
not  at  Frankfort,  the  principal  intermediate  point,  and  where,  as  every 
where  else,  your  visit  has  been  anticipated  with  great  pleasure. 

"  As  for  myself,  I  shall  not  leave  home  for  the  North  until  between  the 
10th  and  15th  July,  if  I  go  at  all. 

"  Poor  Johnston's  untimely  fate  has  filled  me  with  grief.  I  fear  Mr. 
White  has  not  survived. 

"  Favor  me  with  a  line  from  Louisville  as  to  your  movements ;  and  be 
lieve  me  always  faithfully, 

"  Your  friend, 

"H.  CLAY. 

"  The  Honorable  D.  Webster. 

"  P.  S. — I  write  in  duplicate  to  Louisville  and  Cincinnati." 

He  left  Cincinnati  on  the  20th  of  June.  In  Pennsylvania, 
at  "Washington,  and  at  Pittsburg,  public  dinners  awaited  him, 
both  of  which  he  accepted.  At  the  latter  place,  the  demon 
stration  was  of  a  very  imposing  character.  Of  the  whole  tour, 
the  National  Intelligencer,  of  the  13th  of  July,  said :  "  Mr. 
Webster  has  wrought  little  less  than  a  miracle  upon  the  party 
feuds  and  divisions  of  the  Western  country.  He  has  fairly  ex 
tinguished  the  one  and  obliterated  the  other ; "  and  it  spoke  of 
the  complete  political  amalgamation  perceptible  in  the  list  of 
the  committee  which  invited  him  to  Nashville,  the  home  of 
President  Jackson,  in  Tennessee.  It  was  a  time  of  very  bitter 
political  divisions,  and  these  divisions  in  the  West  were  of  the 


464  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

most  extreme  character.  But  men  forgot  their  divisions,  forgot 
their  personal  and  party  rancors,  wherever  Mr.  Webster  came, 
and,  where  he  could  not  come,  they  united  frankly  and  earnestly 
in  expressing  their  regrets  that  any  circumstances  whatever 
should  have  prevented  them  from  manifesting  their  respect  and 
regard  for  him.  These  multiplied  public  proofs  of  the  consider 
ation  in  which  he  was  held  by  large  numbers  of  his  political  oppo 
nents  were  looked  upon  with  much  jealousy  by  a  certain  class  of 
their  associates  in  the  East.  When  connected  with  what  soon  be 
came  known  respecting  the  sentiments  of  the  President  himself, 
and  of  some  of  the  principal  statesmen  about  him,  toward  Mr. 
"Webster,  these  occurrences  stimulated  a  purpose  to  prevent  the 
latter,  if  possible,  from  acquiring  further  influence  with  General 
Jackson.  This  purpose  found  the  means  by  which  it  could  be 
accomplished.  The  following  memorandum,  dictated  by  Mr. 
Webster  in  1838,  discloses,  in  the  concluding  sentence,  the 
peculiar  topic  that  was  made  the  means  of  opening  a  new  sub 
ject  of  difference  between  him  and  the  President,  which  would 
render  it  necessary  for  him  to  oppose  with  renewed  vigor  the 
measures  into  which  the  Administration  was  led. 

"  General  Jackson  took  an  early  opportunity  to  thank  Mr.  Webster  person 
ally  for  his  support  of  the  Administration  on  this  occasion  [the  "  Force 
Bill"] ;  and  Mr.  Livingston  expressed  his  own  sense,  and  that  of  General 
Jackson's  friends,  repeatedly,  and  in  warm  terms.  Before  the  end  of  the  ses 
sion,  a  member  of  the  Senate,  of  General  Jackson's  party,  asked  Mr.  Webster 
to  look  at  a  list  of  applicants  for  an  office  from  the  Eastern  States.  This  Mr. 
Webster  declined,  as  he  did  not  wish  to  place  himself  under  any  obligation. 
In  May,  1833,  Mr.  Webster  set  out  on  a  journey  to  the  West,  and  returned  in 
June  [July].  On  his  return,  he  met  Mr.  Livingston  in  New  York,  who  was 
then  preparing  to  depart  on  his  mission  to  France.  It  was  understood  at 
that  time,  in  private  and  confidential  circles,  that,  before  leaving  Wash 
ington,  Mr.  Livingston  had  frequent  conversations  with  General  Jackson 
respecting  Mr.  Webster,  and  expressing  the  hope  that  he  would  be  able  to 
continue  his  support  of  General  Jackson's  Administration.  These  conver 
sations  were  stated  to  Mr.  W.  On  many  points  of  what  was  then  the  pro 
posed  future  policy  of  the  Government,  there  was  no  great  difference  of 
opinion ;  but  there  was  an  irreconcilable  difference  on  the  great  question 
of  the  currency."  1 

1  Ketchum  MS.— It  has  been  stated  "  Force  Bill,"  the  President's  carriage  was 
by  Mr.  Everett  that,  on  the  day  when  Mr.  sent  to  Mr.  Webster's  lodgings,  with  a 
Webster  replied  to  Mr.  Calhoun  on  the  message  borne  by  the  President's  private 


1833.]  APPROVAL  OF  GENERAL  JACKSOK  465 

Mr.  Webster  knew  in  the  summer  of  1833,  before  he  went 
on  his  journey  to  the  West,  that  the  President  had  determined 
to  remove  the  public  deposits  from  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States  as  soon  as  he  could  effect  it.  But  he  could  not  speak 
publicly  of  this  information  ;  and,  therefore,  when  he  had 
occasion,  at  Pittsburg,  to  refer  to  the  President,  he  con 
fined  himself  to  that  part  of  his  conduct  which  related  to 
his  action  against  the  "  Nullifiers,"  on  which  Mr.  Webster 
said : 

"  Gentlemen,  the  President  of  the  United  States  was,  as  it  seemed  to 
me,  at  this  eventful  crisis,  true  to  his  duty.  He  comprehended  and  under 
stood  the  case,  and  met  it  as  it  was  proper  to  meet  it.  While  I  am  as 
willing  as  others  to  admit  that  the  President  has,  on  other  occasions, 
rendered  important  services  to  the  country,  and  especially  on  that  occa 
sion  which  has  given  him  so  much  military  renown,  I  yet  think  the 
ability  and  decision  with  which  he  rejected  the  disorganizing  doctrines 
of  nullification  create  a  claim,  than  which  he  has  none  higher,  to  the 
gratitude  of  the  country  and  the  respect  of  posterity.  The  appearance 
of  the  proclamation  of  the  10th  of  December  inspired  me,  I  confess,  with 
new  hopes  for  the  duration  of  the  Republic.  I  regarded  it  as  just, 
patriotic,  able,  and  imperiously  demanded  by  the  condition  of  the  coun 
try.  I  would  not  be  understood  to  speak  of  particular  clauses  and 
phrases  in  the  proclamation ;  but  I  regard  its  great  and  leading  doctrines 
as  the  true  and  only  true  doctrines  of  the  Constitution.  They  constitute 
the  sole  ground  on  which  dismemberment  can  be  resisted.  Nothing  else, 
in  my  opinion,  can  hold  us  together.  While  these  opinions  are  maintained, 
the  Union  will  last ;  when  they  shall  be  generally  rejected  and  abandoned, 
that  Union  will  be  at  the  mercy  of  a  temporary  majority  in  any  one  of  the 
States. 

"  I  speak,  gentlemen,  on  this  subject  without  reserve.  I  have  not 
intended,  heretofore  and  elsewhere,  and  do  not  now  intend  here,  to  stint 
my  commendation  of  the  conduct  of  the  President  in  regard  to  the  proc 
lamation  and  the  subsequent  measures.  I  have  differed  with  the  Presi 
dent,  as  all  know,  who  know  any  thing  of  so  humble  an  individual  as  my 
self,  on  many  questions  of  great  general  interest  and  importance.  .  .  .  But 
all  these  differences  afforded,  in  my  judgment,  not  the  slightest  reason  for 
opposing  him  in  a  measure  of  paramount  importance,  and  at  a  moment 
of  great  public  exigency.  I  sought  to  take  counsel  of  nothing  but 
patriotism,  to  feel  no  impulse  but  that  of  duty,  and  to  yield  not  a  lame  and 
hesitating,  but  a  vigorous  and  cordial  support  to  measures,  which,  in  my 

secretary.     The  carriage  being  at  the  him  to  the  Senate-chamber. — (Biographi- 

door  at  the  time  when  Mr.  Webster  was  cal  Memoir,  prefixed  to  Mr.  Webster's 

about  to  go  to  the  Capitol,  it  conveyed  Works,  i.,  109.) 
31 


466  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XIX. 

conscience,  I  believed  to  be  essential  to  the  preservation  of  the  Con 
stitution." 

The  present  chapter  may  be  closed  with  some  selections 
from  Mr.  Webster's  private  correspondence  during  the  winter 
and  spring  of  this  year  : 


[FROM  MR.  j.  E.  DENISON.] 

"  OSSINQTON,  NEWARK,  January  21, 1833. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  It  is  a  long  time  since  I  have  written  to  you,  and  I 
say  it  with  the  more  shame,  as  in  the  interval  I  have  received  a  very 
friendly  letter  from  you.  I  trust  our  friendship  is  sufficiently  deep-rooted 
not  to  suffer  materially  from  an  occasional  drought.  We  have  had  two  or 
three  years  of  difficulties  and  troubles,  and  of  great  labor  and  anxiety  to 
all  connected  in  any  way  with  public  affairs.  You  have  been  moving  on 
for  the  same  time  in  a  course  of  even  prosperity  which  I  have  rejoiced  to 
contemplate,  and  sometimes,  perhaps,  allowed  myself  to  envy.  The  late 
movements  in  your  affairs  have  excited,  of  course,  great  interest  in  this 
country.  The  latest  document  I  have  seen  is  General  Jackson's  proclama 
tion.  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  believe  that  your  differences  will  be  allowed 
to  run  to  very  extreme  lengths.  My  sense  of  the  justness  of  public  opinion 
throughout  the  United  States,  and  of  its  uncontrollable  power,  convinces 
me  that  you  will  settle  the  question  in  dispute  without  violence,  and  cer 
tainly  without  a  dissolution  of  your  Federal  Government.  In  both  coun 
tries  just  now  separation  is  the  cry.  I  prove  my  confidence  in  American 
good  sense  in  confessing  that  I  think  Governor  Hamilton  and  nullification 
will  be  more  easily  settled  than  O'Connell  and  repeal. 

"The  subject  and  the  occasion  will  be  worthy  of  your  powers,  and  I 
look  forward  with  delight  to  their  display,  instructing  your  countrymen 
and  mankind. 

"  We  are  breathing  in  this  country  more  freely  and  calmly  than  we 
have  done  for  some  years ;  a  sort  of  repose  after  the  excitement  of  the 
great  fight  for  reform,  and  the  celebration  of  the  victory  in  the  elections. 
I  have  been  tossed  about  among  two  or  three  constituencies,  and  am  at 
last  quietly  settled  among  my  neighbors  as  the  representative  of  the  south 
division  of  the  county  of  Nottingham.  My  colleague  is  Lord  Lincoln,  the 
eldest  son  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle;  he  has  had  a  public  education  at 
Eton  and  Oxford,  and,  with  a  very  good  disposition,  is  much  more  a  man 
of  the  world  than  his  father,  and  likely  to  keep  out  of  scrapes,  and  to  lead 
an  easier  life.  Our  friend  Wortley,  who  took  a  decided  Tory  line,  is 
thrown  out  of  Parliament  and  public  life  for  the  present.  Stanley  is,  as 
you  know,  a  Cabinet  minister  and  Secretary  for  Ireland.  Labouchere  is  a 
Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  and  I  occupy  the  place  of  an  independent  country 


1833.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  467 

gentleman,  and  M.  P.  for  my  own  county.  I  declined  taking  office  under 
Lord  Grey  when  I  had  the  offer  of  Secretary  for  Indian  Affairs.  I  ac 
quiesced  in  the  Keform  Bill,  and  supported  it  through  all  its  leading  pro 
visions,  but  declined  further  identifying  myself  at  that  time  with  its 
authors.  We  now  stand  at  the  commencement  of  a  new  era ;  and  the  first 
question  will  be,  whether  the  impulse  given  to  the  movement  party  (to  use 
a  French  phrase)  can  be  resisted  by  those  who  gave  the  first  impulse  to 
the  movement.  Can  Lord  Grey  and  his  colleagues  put  a  drag-chain  on 
their  own  car  ?  I  shall  lend  them  all  my  aid  to  enable  them  to  do  so. 
Great  changes  in  church  and  in  almost  every  department  must  and  ought 
to  follow.  But  the  check  wanted  is  no  further  change  in  the  constitution 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  movement  party  cries  out  for  the  ballot,  for 
triennial  Parliaments,  for  household  suffrage.  At  present  I  am  quite  sure 
the  mass  of  the  country,  nine-tenths  of  the  property  and  education  and 
respectability,  do  not  want  further  change,  but,  on  the  contrary,  entirely 
deprecate  it.  A  very  great  deal  turns  on  the  discretion  of  the  Government, 
and  I  am  not  sure  that  of  that  quality  there  is  in  some  of  its  members  a 
very  large  stock. 

"  I  wish  you  would  enlighten  me  on  the  ballot.  I  did  not,  while  in 
America,  pay  very  much  attention  to  its  real  working  and  effect.  I  heard 
various  opinions  about  it,  but  did  not  examine  them  minutely.  Some 
said  the  ballot  did  not  effect  secrecy,  that  people's  votes  were  still  known. 
What  should  you  say  about  it  ? 

"I  am  very  curious,  too,  about  the  success  of  some  of  your  experiments 
in  prison  discipline.  How  does  the  plan  adopted  at  Auburn  answer? 
Perhaps  you  could  get  our  friend  the  Judge  to  write  me  a  letter  on  this 
subject. 

"  I  hope  you  have  not  given  up  all  idea  of  paying  us  a  visit  here.  It 
would  give  me  the  greatest  pleasure  to  see  you,  and  I  would  devote  my 
self  to  you  to  make  your  time  pass  as  agreeably  as  I  could. 

"  With  my  best  remembrances  to  the  Judge,  and  to  any  of  my  friends 
who  may  keep  me  in  their  memory, 

"  Believe  me, 

"  Yours  very  sincerely, 

"  J.  E.  DENISON." 


[TO  MR.   PAIGE.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Friday,  P.  M.,  March  5, 1833. 

"  DEAR  WILLIAM  :  I  give  you  great  joy  at  the  birth  of  a  daughter ! 
There  is  no  event  on  which  I  could  more  sincerely  congratulate  you.  A 
daughter  is  one  of  Heaven's  best  and  sweetest  gifts  to  man.  It  delights 
me  to  hear  of  her  dark  hair,  dark  eyes,  and  high  forehead,  although  it 
costs  me  an  involuntary  tear,  by  the  recollection  of  poor  little  Grace.  My 
dear  sir,  I  share  your  feelings,  and  partake  your  joy.  May  a  thousand 


468  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XIX. 

blessings  hover  over  the  little  stranger  !  I  beg  to  be  most  particularly  re 
membered  to  Harriette.  What  a  new  world  this  has  become  to  her  by  the 
events  of  a  year !  Pray  give  her  my  love. 

"  I  shall  write  a  note  forthwith  to  the  Judge,1  and  send  Charles  off  with 
it.  I  met  Mr.  Appleton  between  the  House  and  my  seat  in  the  Senate,  he 
bringing  me  the  news,  I  carrying  if  to  him.  So  you  see  the  young  lady 
makes  a  stir  in  Washington  already.  I  thank  you  for  your  continued 
attention  to  my  land  matters,  etc. 

"  I  would  be  glad  to  help  poor  Edward  along  with  his  hard  lessons,  if 
I  were  at  home.  Tell  him  to  keep  good  courage.  Making  Latin  is  hard 
work,  but  it  will  grow  easier. 

"  Yours  most  truly  always, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

[TO   MR.  PAIGE.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  March  10, 1833. 

"  DEAR  WILLIAM  :  I  have  been  exceedingly  glad  to  hear  from  you  from 
day  to  day,  with  accounts  of  Harriette  and  Miss  Paige.  I  rejoice  to  think 
that,  by  the  time  you  receive  this,  Harriette  will  be  at  the  head  of  her  own 

table  again ;  for 

'  What  is  a  table,  richly  spread, 
Without  a  lady  at  its  head  ? ' 

"Although  not  a  passionate  lover  of  children,  that  I  know  nothing 
about,  yet  I  really  long  to  see  this  little  specimen  of  humanity. 

"  Mr.  Appleton  and  Mr.  Button  seem  much  pleased  with  the  result  of 
the  sales.  They  think  it  was  better  than  was  to  be  expected.  They  both 
perused  the  catalogue,  etc.,  many  an  hour,  while  I  read  the  newspapers. 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Button  leave  us  on  Monday  next. 

"  I  hear  that  Mrs.  Webster  was  at  Baltimore  last  night ;  and,  while  I 
write  this,  I  am  expecting  every  moment  to  see  her.  Charles  keeps  watch 
at  the  door. 

"  Pray  dispatch  Mr.  White  by  the  15th.  I  want  to  see  him,  but  do  not 
let  the  girls  suppose  I  am  desirous  of  seeing  them. 

"P.  S.  Six  o'clock. — Mrs.  Webster  came  into  this  great  city  at  three, 
with  Mrs.  Edgar,  Herman  Newbold,  and  Mr.  Hamilton  Fish.  All  well. 

"  I  write  to  Mr.  White  by  this  post ;  if  he  shall  have  left  you,  you  may 
either  send  it  after  him  to  New  York,  or  put  it  into  the  fire,  no  matter  which. 

"  Yours, 

"B.  W." 

[TO  MR.   PAIGE.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  Tuesday  Morning,  April  24, 1833. 

"  BEAR  WILLIAM  :  I  have  received  yours  respecting  the  lining  of  the 
chaise.  I  do  not  like  a  dark  lining ;  such  linings  look  hot  in  summer,  and 

1  Judge  Story,  uncle  to  Mrs.  Paige. 


1833.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  469 

in  winter  I  go  in  a  sleigh.  I  reject  blue;  therefore,  the  body  and  carriage 
being  dark,  I  suppose  a  light  drab  would  not  answer,  and  dark  drab  looks 
dull.  On  the  whole,  I  am  for  a  brown,  or  a  claret,  though,  if  I  know  what 
a  claret  is,  it  is  rather  darker  than  I  should  like,  yet  I  think  it  will  do  very 
well.  Please  ask  Harriette  whether  it  shall  be  a  claret  or  a  brown,  and 
decide  according  to  her  response,  as  I  hope  she  will  sometimes  do  my  new 
chaise  the  honor  to  take  a  drive  in  it. 

"I  hear  that  Mr.  "White  and  daughters  left  Baltimore  yesterday  morn 
ing.  Of  course,  Mr.  A.  and  Mrs.  White  did  not  reach  them  there.  They 
will,  doubtless,  overtake  them  this  night  at  Philadelphia.  I  am  happy  to 
say  that  my  letters  this  morning,  dated  Sunday  morning,  represented  Mrs. 
Jones  as  a  great  deal  better. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"D.  WEBSTEK." 


470  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XX. 


CHAPTER    XX. 
1833-1834 


ME.  WEBSTER'S  FINANCIAL  VIEWS — REMOVAL  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT 

DEPOSITS    FROM   THE   BANK   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES MR.  CLAY?S 

RESOLUTIONS     OF     CENSURE MR.    WEBSTER''3     REPORT     ON    THE 

REMOVAL    OF   THE   DEPOSITS INTRODUCES   A   BILL    TO  MEET  THE 

CRISIS — THE  PRESIDENT'S  PROTEST  AGAINST  THE  RESOLUTIONS 
OF  THE  SENATE SPEECH  IN  ANSWER  TO  THE  PROTEST PER 
SONAL  RELATIONS  TO  THE  BANK RISE  OF  THE  WHIG  PARTY. 


THE  "  irreconcilable  difference  on  the  great  question  of  the 
currency,"  between  Mr.  Webster  and  the  Administration 
of  General  Jackson,  is  a  topic  that  requires  to  be  carefully  un 
derstood  by  the  reader.  To  this  understanding,  a  statement  of 
Mr.  Webster's  opinions  on  the  subject  of  the  currency  is  here 
essential. 

He  was  in  Congress  when  the  last  bank  of  the  United  States 
was  created,  in  1816,  and,  after  an  interval  of  five  or  six  years, 
he  had  been  in  public  life  ever  since.  The  opinions  which  he 
held  in  1816,  respecting  the  duty  of  the  General  Government 
toward  the  currency  of  the  country,  and  concerning  the  means 
of  discharging  that  duty,  had  been  confirmed  by  the  whole  ex 
perience  of  the  period  that  had  since  elapsed.  His  financial 
system  rested,  for  its  corner-stone,  on  the  principle  that  the 
Government  should  not  permit  its  revenues  to  be  paid  in  any 
bank-paper  that  was  not  in  fact  as  well  as  in  theory  convertible 
at  once  into  specie.  This  he  regarded  as  the  only  efficient  means 
of  repressing  a  circulation  of  depreciated  paper  money.  He 


1833.]  FINANCIAL  VIEWS.  471 

caused  this  principle  to  be  acted  on  by  the  Government,  and  it 
had  been  successful  through  the  whole  period  of  seventeen 
years.  To  a  national  bank,  with  a  suitable  capital,  carefully 
guarded  against  the  suspension  of  specie  payments,  either  at  the 
dictation  of  the  Government  or  by  its  own  action,  he  was  not 
opposed  in  1816.  He  believed  then  that  the  paper  of  such  a 
bank  could  be  made  eminently  useful  in  the  exchanges  of  the 
country,  and  that  it  could  be  an  important  fiscal  agent  of  the 
Government,  relieving  it  of  the  necessity  of  moving  great 
masses  of  specie  from  one  part  of  the  country  to  another  when 
ever  payments  were  to  be  made  or  balances  were  to  be  settled. 
But,  so  far  as  such  a  system  rested  upon  the  use  of  credit,  or 
involved  the  use  of  credit,  it  was  with  Mr.  Webster  a  cardinal 
principle  that  the  paper  instruments  of  that  credit  should  be 
based  on  immediate  convertibility  into  specie  at  the  pleasure 
of  the  holder.  This  point  being  secured,  he  held  that  there  was 
no  reason  why  the  Government  should  use  gold  and  silver,  ex 
clusively,  in  its  own  transactions.  On  the  contrary,  from  the 
magnitude  of  the  public  transactions,  and  their  relation  to  the 
commercial  exchanges  of  the  country,  he  held  it  to  be  essential 
that  there  should  be  a  mixed  currency,  alike  capable  of  use  by 
the  Government  and  by  individuals,  consisting  of  specie  and  of 
bank  paper  securely  representing  specie.  The  existence  of  the 
State  banks,  with  the  power  of  issuing  paper  for  a  circulating 
medium,  he  regarded  as  an  evil ;  but  as  an  evil  which  it  was 
better  to  regulate  than  to  endeavor  to  suppress.  Such  regula 
tion,  of  an  indirect  nature,  could  be  exercised  by  a  national 
bank,  the  effect  of  whose  operations  would  be  to  limit  the  area 
over  which  the  paper  of  such  local  banks  would  circulate,  and 
thus  their  tendency  to  make  excessive  issues  would  be  checked. 
Mr.  "Webster  was  not,  therefore,  what  is  called  a  "  hard- 
money  man,"  in  the  sense  which  banishes  all  paper  circulation ; 
but  in  the  sense  that  admits  of  the  use  of  bank-paper,  and  yet 
which  requires  it,  by  suitable  provisions  of  law,  to  be  kept 
always  and  practically  at  the  par  of  its  nominal  specie  value, 
he  was,  as  he  always  claimed  to  be,  a  "  bullionist."  Although 
the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  chartered  in  1816,  had  some 
features  which,  as  we  have  seen,  caused  him  to  vote  against  it, 
its  operation  and  effect,  coupled  with  the  influence  of  his  specie 


472  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XX. 

resolutions  of  the  same  year,  had  been  entirely  successful  in 
producing  a  sound  state  of  the  currency.  We  have  his  recorded 
opinion,  expressed  in  1831,  that  "  the  United  States  have  had 
a  currency  perfectly  sound  and  safe,  and  more  convenient, 
and  producing  local  exchanges  at  less  expense,  than  any  other 
nation  is,  or  ever  was,  blessed  with." 1 

It  is  not  probable  that  this  condition  of  the  currency  would 
have  been  disturbed,  if  political  events  had  not  intruded  an 
element  of  a  personal  nature  into  the  question  of  renewing  the 
charter  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States.  General  Jackson 
had  refused  his  assent  to  a  bill  for  renewing  the  charter  of  the 
bank,  in  1832,  previous  to  the  election  in  which  he  was  again  a 
candidate  for  the  presidency.  He  believed  that  the  bank  had 
entered  the  political  field  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  his  re 
election  ;  and  he  came  to  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  his 
second  presidency  with  a  determination  to  prevent  the  bank 
from  obtaining  any  prolongation  of  its  existence.  The  belief 
which  he  and  some  of  his  friends  entertained,  naturally  led  to 
the  conviction  that  a  moneyed  institution,  possessed  of  so  large 
a  capital,  and  having  certain  practical  powers  over  the  whole 
paper  circulation  of  the  country,  was  a  dangerous  instrument, 
capable  of  political  uses,  and  therefore  capable  of  abuse.  The 
effect  of  this  conviction  was,  when  it  came  to  be  acted  on,  to 
place  a  great  moneyed  capital  in  a  struggle  with  the  Executive 
Government  for  the  retention  of  the  privileges  which  it  had 
enjoyed,  and  for  which  it  claimed  to  have  paid,  and  to  be  still 
paying,  an  ample  equivalent  in  the  benefits  which  its  incorpo 
ration  and  its  use,  as  regulated  by  law,  conferred  on  the  Gov 
ernment  and  the  country.  Whatever  might  be  the  result,  the 
controversy  was  one  that  must  necessarily  cause  great  mischiefs 
to  the  public ;  for  it  was  a  controversy  that  could  scarcely  be 
tried  upon  its  true  merits,  and  it  was  very  likely  to  lead  to 
measures  that  were  merely  experimental  and  tentative,  because 
there  could  be  no  transition  from  the  existing  financial  system  of 
the  Government  to  another  equally  sound,  convenient,  and  safe, 
while  there  was  so  much  difference  of  opinion  as  to  what  the 
substitute  ought  to  be,  and  while  the  immediate  changes  were 
so  liable  to  be  dictated  by  personal  and  party  considerations. 

1  Ante,  chap,  vii.,  p.  150. 


1833.]  CONTINUES  IN  THE   OPPOSITION.  473 

From  this  unfortunate  attitude,  and  from  the  exposure  to  be 
led  into  immediate  steps  disastrous  to  the  country,  Mr.  Webster 
would  have  saved  the  Administration  of  General  Jackson,  if  he 
could  have  done  so.  There  could  have  been  no  doubt  enter 
tained  by  any  one  that  Mr.  Webster's  general  system  on  the 
financial  questions  involved  was  the  correct  one.  But  an  im 
partial  consideration  of  principles  was  out  of  the  question  in 
the  state  of  feeling  which  then  existed.  The  President  and 
many  of  his  friends  had  come  to  entertain  the  belief  that  the 
bank  must  be  compelled  to  wind  up  its  affairs,  and  surrender 
its  existence ;  and,  consequently,  that  other  modes  of  treating 
the  relations  between  the  Government  and  the  currency,  and 
of  transacting  the  fiscal  business  of  the  United  States,  must  be 
resorted  to. 

When,  therefore,  Mr.  Livingston,  in  the  summer  of  1833,  held 
the  important  conversation  with  Mr.  Webster,  in  the  city  of 
New  York,  which  developed  the  only  irreconcilable  difference 
between  the  latter  gentleman  and  the  Administration,  as  its 
future  policy  was  stated  to  him,  it  is  quite  easy  to  see  what  that 
difference  was.  In  the  first  place,  Mr.  Webster  did  not  ap 
prove  of  the  refusal  to  continue  in  existence  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States  ;  nor  did  he  believe  that,  if  the  Executive  hostility 
were  not  directed  against  it,  it  would  be  misused  for  political 
purposes.  In  the  next  place,  he  knew  that  the  condition  of  the 
currency,  dependent  on  the  practical  benefits  secured  by  the 
operation  of  the  bank,  was  perfectly  sound  and  healthy ;  he  held 
that  this  condition  ought  not  to  be  disturbed  by  experimental 
efforts  to  find  some  other  mode  of  managing  the  public  finances ; 
and  that  it  could  not  be  disturbed  without  producing  universal 
commercial  derangement  and  distress.  He  saw  that  the  Admin 
istration,  if  the  determinations  of  the  President  were  persisted 
in,  would  be  committed  to  a  course  of  measures  that  were  far 
more  likely  to  be  dictated  by  accidental  circumstances,  than 
they  were  to  be  the  steps  of  a  comprehensive  policy  that  per 
ceived  distinctly  the  objects  at  which  it  meant  to  aim,  and  that 
grasped  the  principles  on  which  a  new  system  was  to  be  based, 
so  as  to  bring  them  into  operation  without  serious  injury  to  the 
business  interests  of  the  community.  In  the  result  Mr.  Web 
ster  proved  to  be  right.  What  the  President  was  determined 


474  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

to  prevent  was,  the  renewal  of  the  bank  charter.  What  he  did 
not  foresee,  and  had  not  settled,  was,  the  system  that  was  to 
take  its  place. 

It  is  probable  that  Mr.  Livingston,  in  his  conversation  with 
Mr.  Webster,  must  have  alluded  to  the  plan,  which  the  Presi 
dent  had  already  entertained,  of  removing  the  Government 
deposits  from  the  Bank  of  the  United  States.  At  all .  events, 
Mr.  Webster  was  aware  of  it,  although  it  was  not  publicly 
known  at  the  time  of  the  interview  between  those  gentlemen. 
The  fact  was,  however,  that,  in  the  previous  May,  the  Presi 
dent  had  consulted  his  Cabinet  in  regard  to  this  measure,  at  a 
time  when  Mr.  Louis  McLane  was  Secretary  of  the  Treasury. 
Two  of  the  Secretaries  had  given  written  opinions  in  favor  of 
the  removal,  and  two  had  given  their  written  opinions  against 
it.  Mr.  McLane,  by  whom  alone  the  removal  could  be  ordered, 
was  opposed  to  it.  He  was  induced  to  accept  a  diplomatic  ap 
pointment,  and  Mr.  William  J.  Duane,  of  Pennsylvania,  was 
made  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  on  the  29th  of  May.  Although 
his  known  opinions  were  against  the  bank,  he  did  not  accept 
the  office  with  a  pledge  that  he  would  order  the  removal  of  the 
deposits,  if  required  to  do  so. 

This  was  the  attitude  of  the  Executive  Department  when 
the  President  went  on  his  tour  to  the  Eastern  States,  at  a  time 
when  Mr.  Webster  was  absent  from  home.  The  President  left 
Washington  early  in  June,  remained  in  Boston  and  its  neigh 
borhood  through  that  month,  and  reached  Washington  on  his 
return  on  the  4th  of  July.  Before  his  return,  his  purpose  to 
have  the  deposits  removed  from  the  bank  had  become  irrev 
ocably  fixed.  If  Mr.  Webster  had  been  in  Boston  during 
the  President's  visit,  the  latter  would  have  had  an  opportunity, 
if  he  had  chosen  to  use  it,  to  sound  Mr.  Webster  on  the  subject ; 
or,  if  that  is  to  be  regarded  as  an  improbable  occurrence,  it 
could  scarcely  have  happened  that  the  President,  with  the  gen 
eral  confidence  which  he  felt  in  Mr.  Webster,  and  his  acknowl 
edged  obligations  to  him,  would  not  have  held  conversations 
with  him  that  might  have  cleared  the  Executive  mind  of  many 
delusive  ideas,  and  rendered  it  less  open  to  the  influence  of  per 
sons  who  had  an  object  in  misleading  it.  For,  that  General  Jack 
son  was  misled  when  he  was  induced  to  take  this  step — that  it 


1833.]  REMOVAL  OF  THE  DEPOSITS.  475 

was  a  step  fraught  with  incalculable  mischiefs  to  the  country, 
and  that  it  impelled  the  President  into  measures  that  ultimately 
cost  his  party  the  control  of  the  Government — can  now  be  seen 
with  entire  distinctness.  All  these  consequences  could  have 
been  pointed  out  by  Mr.  "Webster,  if  General  Jackson  had  been 
wise  enough  to  have  consulted  a  statesman  who  was  personally 
disposed  to  aid  him  in  what  concerned  the  welfare  of  the  coun 
try,  and  whose  advice  would  have  been  given  on  purely  public 
grounds.  Undoubtedly,  General  Jackson's  victory,  as  it  has 
been  accounted,  over  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  has  been 
regarded  by  many  as  his  most  famous  civil  achievement,  and  as 
entitling  him  to  the  gratitude  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  pos 
terity.  But  this  is  a  subject  which  has  more  than  one  side. 
We  are  here  concerned  with  the  view  taken  of  it  by  Mr.  "Web 
ster,  and  with  his  action  in  regard  to  it.1 

By  the  charter  of  the  bank,  which  was  still  in  force  as  a  law 
of  the  land,  the  moneys  of  the  United  States  were  required  to 
be  deposited  in  the  bank  or  its  branches,  subject  to  a  power  of 
removal  in  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who  was  required 
immediately  to  lay  his  reasons  for  such  removal  before  Con 
gress,  if  in  session  at  the  time,  and,  if  Congress  was  not  in  ses 
sion,  as  soon  as  it  had  assembled.  In  consideration  of  being 
made  the  depositary  of  the  public  funds,  the  bank  had  paid  to 
the  Government  a  million  and  a  half  of  dollars,  and  had  bound 
itself  to  make  the  necessary  transfers  of  the  public  money, 

1  It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  now  gener-  President  who  ever  propounded  the  idea 

ally  overlooked,  that  President  Jackson,  of  an  executive  bank  founded  on  the 

who  came  into  office  in  March,  1829,  and  revenues  and  credit  of  the  Government ; 

who  announced  in  his  inaugural  address  second,  that  the  plan  to  which  he  resorted 

that  the  great  object  of  his  Administra-  after  he  had  removed  the  public  deposits 

tion  would  be  the  reform  of   abuses,  from  the  Bank  of  the  United  States, 

which  he  specified,  did  not  mention  the  namely,  to  unite  certain  State  banks  in  a 

Bank  of  the  United  States  as  unconsti-  fiscal  agency  for  the  Government  for  the 

tutional,  unnecessary,  or  dangerous.     In  collection  and  disbursement  of  its  reve- 

his  annual  message  of  December,  1829,  nues,  was  in  substance  the  same  kind  of 

he  advanced  the  opinion  that  the  true  executive  bank  which  he  recommended 

bank  for  the  use  oft/te  Government  of  the  in  December,  1829.     Moreover,  it  was  a 

United  States  would  be  one  founded  on  the  system  which,  without  any  sanction  of 

revenues  and  credit  of  the  Government  it-  law,  brought  the  whole  money  power  of 

self.    When,  therefore,  it  is  claimed  for  the  Government  under  the  direct  manage- 

General  Jackson,  as  the  great  merit  of  ment  and  control  of  the  Executive.     It 

his  official  career,  that  he  severed  the  certainly  effected  no  divorce  of  the  Gov- 

Government  from  all  connection  with  a  eminent  from  banking  institutions ;  al- 

bank,  and  taught  us  the  dangers  of  such  though  it  did  divorce  the  connection  be- 

a  connection,  two  things  should  be  re-  tween  the  Government  and  one  particular 

membered  :    First,  that  he  was  the  first  bank. 


476  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

throughout  the  country,  for  the  payment  of  the  public  creditors, 
without  any  charge  or  allowance  on  account  of  differences  of 
exchange.  Although,  at  the  last  session  of  Congress,  the  bank 
had  failed,  in  consequence  of  the  President's  opposition,  to  ob 
tain  a  prolongation  of  its  charter,  the  present  charter  would 
not  expire  until  the  year  1836,  and  the  legal  and  fiscal  rela 
tions  between  the  bank  and  the  Government  remained  un 
changed. 

Soon  after  the  return  of  the  President  to  "Washington,  it 
began  to  be  publicly  rumored  that  an  irresponsible  cabal  was 
trying  to  induce  him  to  order  the  removal  of  the  public  de 
posits  from  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  and  to  place  them 
in  certain  selected  State  banks.  Before  the  end  of  July,  it  was 
announced  in  the  official  newspaper  that  an  agent  had  been 
appointed  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  under  the  direction 
of  the  President,  to  ascertain  from  the  State  banks  in  the  prin 
cipal  cities  on  what  terms  and  in  what  manner  they  would  be 
willing  to  perform  the  services  hitherto  rendered  by  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States,  if  the  Government  should  think  proper  to 
remove  the  deposits.  This  inquiry  was  actively  conducted  in 
August  and  September.  On  the  18th  of  September,  the  Presi 
dent  read  a  paper  to  his  Cabinet,  announcing  the  final  con 
clusions  of  his  own  mind,  and  the  reasons  on  which  they  were 
founded.  In  this  paper,  he  made  known  to  them  that  the 
measure  was  his  own,  and  that  he  assumed  the  responsibility 
of  it.  He  did  not  require  their  concurrence,  but  he  made  it 
very  plain  that  he  would  not  brook  opposition.  He  named  the 
first  day  of  October  as  the  period  when  the  removal  was  to  take 
place,  or  sooner,  provided  the  necessary  arrangements  could  be 
made  with  the  State  banks. 

The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Mr.  Duane,  believing  that 
the  law  referred  to  his  judgment,  and  not  to  the  judgment  of 
the  President,  the  question  whether  the  custody  of  the  public 
moneys  should  at  any  time  be  changed,  and  not  concurring  in 
the  President's  reasons  for  this  act,  declined  to  order  the  re 
moval.1  The  President  dismissed  him  from  office  on  the  23d 

1  That  there  was  no  reasonable  ground  apparent  from  the  fact  that,  at  the  recent 
for  the  apprehension  that  had  been  ex-  session  of  Congress  in  the  winter  of  1832- 
cited  in  the  breast  of  the  President,  is  '33,  the  House  of  Representatives,  after  in- 


1833.]  REMOVAL   OF  THE  DEPOSITS.  477 

of  September,  and  on  the  same  day,  Mr.  Taney,  afterward 
Chief  Justice  of  the  United  States,  was  appointed  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury.  Before  this  occurrence,  namely,  on  the  20th, 
the  official  newspaper  was  authorized  to  state  that  the  deposits 
would  be  removed  from  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  and 
placed  in  the  State  banks  as  soon  as  the  necessary  arrangements 
could  be  made.  This  intelligence  was  received  in  the  city  of  lS"ew 
York,  the  commercial  centre  of  the  United  States,  on  the  21st, 
with  extraordinary  sensations  of  alarm  and  reprehension.  On  the 
26th,  Mr.  Taney  signed  an  official  order  removing  the  deposits. 

There  was  no  existing  law  authorizing  the  selection  of  the 
State  banks  as  custodians  of  the  public  money,  and  no  author 
ity  in  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  make  contracts  with  the 
State  banks  for  the  performance  of  the  duties  of  fiscal  agents  of 
the  Government,  excepting  as  such  a  power  could  be  inferred  by 
remote  implication  from  the  Secretary's  authority  to  change  the 
custody  of  the  public  funds  when  Congress  was  not  in  session. 

When  these  occurrences  afterward  became  known  to  the 
country,  it  appeared  very  plainly  that  while  a  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  was  in  office  who  held  it  to  be  his  duty  not  to  remove 
the  deposits  until  Congress  could  consider  the  propriety  and 
expediency  of  the  step,  the  President  had  determined  that  the 
removal  should  be  made,  and  that  he  changed  the  officer  in 
order  to  secure  obedience  to  his  will.  It  also  appeared  that  the 
President  had  considered  no  other  plan  for  the  custody  of  the 
public  funds  and  for  the  performance  of  the  fiscal  agency  for 
the  Government,  hitherto  performed  by  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States,  and  regulated  by  the  law  contained  in  the  charter  of 
that  bank,  except  that  the  custody  and  the  fiscal  agency  should 
be  intrusted  to  certain  State  banks,  to  be  selected  by  the 
Executive.  "When  this  measure  was  resolved  on  and  executed, 
the  project  which  was  afterward  developed,  for  dispensing  with 
all  bank  agency,  and  conducting  the  fiscal  operations  of  the 
Government  by  the  direct  action  of  the  Treasury,  as  well  as  the 
further  plan  of  making  gold  and  silver  the  sole  medium  of  cir 
culation,  had  not  become  parts  of  the  Administration  scheme. 

vestigation,  had  pronounced  the  bank  to  When  Mr.  Taney  assigned  his  reasons 

be  a  well-conducted  institution,  and  had  for  removing  the  deposits,  he  did   not 

expressed  the  opinion  that  the   public  rest  his  justification  upon  the  charge  that 

moneys  were  entirely  safe  in  its  keeping,  they  were  not  in  safe  custody. 


478  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

When,  therefore,  Congress  assembled  in  December,  the 
country  was  undergoing  the  effects  of  this  sudden  change  in 
the  relations  of  the  Government  to  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States,  and  had  entered  upon  the  experiment  of  substituting 
State  banks  for  the  performance  of  the  various  duties  imposed 
by  law  upon  the  national  institution.  The  removal  of  the  pub 
lic  deposits  from  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  was  imme 
diately  followed  by  a  contraction  of  its  loans,  and  a  general 
panic ;  and  so  great  was  the  commercial  distress,  that,  as  soon 
as  Congress  was  assembled,  memorials  from  all  quarters  of  the 
country  were  poured  upon  its  tables  urging  a  restoration  of  the 
public  moneys  to  the  institution  to  which  the  law  had  confided 
them.  The  experiment,  too,  of  making  use  of  the  State  banks 
as  fiscal  agents  of  the  Government  had  already  failed  to  com 
mand  the  public  confidence,  while  it  had  pushed  the  selected 
banks  into  a  position  in  which  they  were  certain  to  become  the 
instruments  of  wild  speculation  in  the  hands  of  their  managers, 
which  was  to  ruin  many  of  them  in  the  end,  entailing  a  long 
course  of  disasters  upon  the  several  communities  within  the 
spheres  of  their  operation. 

Yet  the  condition  of  the  public  mind  was  at  the  very  time 
of  these  events  in  some  respects  favorable  to  the  change.  Per 
haps  no  man  has  ever  held  the  office  of  President  of  the  Uni 
ted  States  with  more  personal  power  than  General  Jackson. 
Among  great  masses  of  the  people  there  was  such  a  conviction 
of  his  patriotism  and  honesty,  that,  while  they  disapproved  of 
his  acts,  and  saw  their  arbitrary  or  illegal  character,  they  gave 
him  credit  for  wisdom  and  integrity  in  his  ends,  and  were  will 
ing  to  overlook  the  objectionable  character  of  his  means.  Over 
the  public  men  who  belonged  to  his  political  party,  and  over 
the  party  itself,  he  exercised  an  almost  absolute  sway.  Few 
dared  to  withstand  a  will  that  was  at  once  so  inflexible  and  so 
imperious.  He  was,  too,  a  great  and  most  adroit  politician  in 
the  personal  management  of  those  whom  he  had  occasion  to 
influence ;  knowing  well  when  to  restrain  and  when  to  un 
bridle  his  own  temper,  and  holding  its  manifestations  under  the 
guidance  of  an  instinct  that  enabled  him  to  perceive  when  they 
would  be  useful,  or  when  they  would  be  misapplied.  It  must 
ever  be  regarded  as  a  striking  proof  of  the  mere  power  which 


1833.]  FINANCIAL  CRISIS.  479 

he  exercised  over  the  people  of  this  country,  that  two  such 
statesmen  as  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Clay  put  forth  the  exertion 
of  every  faculty  that  they  possessed,  each  in  his  own  character 
istic  way,  to  convince  the  people  that  the  measures  of  Gen 
eral  Jackson  were  often  wrong,  both  in  point  of  constitutional 
authority  and  in  point  of  present  expediency ;  and  yet  he  al 
ways  carried  them,  and  the  great  men  who  opposed  them  had 
to  wait  for  the  recognitions  of  the  future,  and  for  that  popular 
conviction  which  comes  only  after  public  suffering  has  enforced 
the  truth. 

On  the  assembling  of  Congress,  Mr.  Webster  was  chosen 
chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Finance.  He  had  made 
up  his  mind  that  there  was  but  one  course  that  ought  to  be 
pursued.  Congress,  he  thought,  would  have  to  act  for  the  relief 
of  the  country  from  the  prevailing  and  increasing  distress.  It 
would  have  to  regulate,  in  some  form,  the  custody  of  the  public 
money,  and  not  leave  it  to  the  discretionary  control  of  the 
Executive.  He  did  not  believe  in  the  capacity  of  the  State 
banks  to  fulfil  the  functions  which  had  been  performed  by  the 
Bank  of  the  United  States ;  and  he  foretold  with  the  utmost 
distinctness  how  that  incapacity  would,  as  it  did,  reveal  itself. 
Although  he  held  that  the  only  suitable  remedy  for  the  existing 
state  of  things  was,  to  continue  the  national  bank  in  existence 
for  a  short  period  beyond  its  present  charter,  until  Congress 
could  more  deliberately  determine  on  the  financial  system  best 
adapted  to  the  wants  of  the  country  and  of  the  Government,  he 
considered  it  to  be  the  first  duty  of  Congress  to  act  upon  the 
reasons  assigned  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  in  his  official 
report,  for  the  removal  of  the  deposits,  and  to  vindicate  its  own 
authority  over  the  subject  against  the  assumption  by  the 
Executive  of  powers  not  vested  in  it  by  the  Constitution  and  the 
laws.  This  action,  he  maintained,  should  not  be  allowed  to  be 
mixed  with  or  influenced  by  the  question  whether  there  was  or 
was  not  to  be  in  the  future  a  national  bank.  At  the  same  time, 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  his  own  opinion  to  be,  that  a  na 
tional  bank,  in  some  form,  was  a  national  necessity,  and  that  the 
period  could  not  then  be  foreseen  when  it  would  cease  to  be  so. 
But  the  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  decide  whether  the  de 
posits  should  be  restored  to  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  or 


480 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[On.  XX. 


whether  they  were  to  be  left  in  the  custody  of  the  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  without  the  sanction  and  regulation  of  law. 
These  were  the  opinions  with  which  Mr.  Webster  entered  the 
Senate  at  this  momentous  session. 

On  the  26th  of  December,  Mr.  Clay  introduced  two  resolu 
tions,  the  first  of  which  declared  that  the  President,  by  dismiss 
ing  the  late  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  because  he  would  not, 
contrary  to  his  own  sense  of  duty,  remove  the  public  deposits 
from  the  bank,  and  by  appointing  his  successor  to  effect  such 
removal,  which  had  been  done,  had  assumed  the  exercise  of  a 
power  over  the  Treasury  not  granted  to  him  by  the  Constitu 
tion  and  the  laws,  and  dangerous  to  the  liberties  of  the  people. 
His  second  resolution  pronounced  the  reasons  assigned  by  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  for  the  removal  unsatisfactory  and 
insufficient.1  During  a  long  and  excited  discussion  which  en- 


1  The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Mr. 
Taney,  assumed  the  ground,  first,  that 
the  power  to  remove  the  deposits  was 
vested  in  him,  and  that  Congress,  under 
the  stipulations  in  the  charter  of  the 
bank,  could  not  direct  it  to  be  done ;  sec 
ond,  that  the  exercise  of  his  power  did  not 
depend  merely  on  the  safety  of  the  pub 
lic  money  in  the  hands  of  the  bank,  nor 
on  the  fidelity  with  which  it  had  con 
ducted  itself,  but  that  he  had  the  right, 
and  that  it  was  his  duty,  to  remove  the 
deposits  whenever  the  public  interest  or 
convenience  would  be  promoted  by  the 
change.  He  assumed,  as  the  basis  of 
his  action,  that  the  refusal  of  the  Presi 
dent,  at  the  former  session,  to  assent  to 
the  bill  renewing  the  charter,  and  his  re 
election  since,  had  settled  the  question 
that  the  charter  was  to  expire  on  the  3d 
of  March,  1836.  On  these  premises,  his 
reasons  were,  that  the  public  interest 
required  that  the  deposits  should  not  be 
continued  in  the  bank  to  the  close  of  its 
existence ;  and  that  the  bank  had  been 
guilty  of  actual  misconduct,  which  chief 
ly  consisted  in  its  attempt  to  influence 
the  late  elections.  He  claimed  that  the 
power  to  remove  the  deposits  from  the 
Bank  of  the  United  States  carried  with 
it  the  power  to  select  other  depositaries, 
and  to  make  contracts  with  them.  The 
State  banks  which  he  had  selected  for 
this  purpose  were,  he  said,  by  agree 
ments  among  themselves,  "providing  a 
general  currency  at  least  as  sound  as  that 
of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  and  [one 


that]  will  afford  facilities  to  commerce, 
and  in  the  business  of  domestic  exchange, 
quite  equal  to  any  which  the  community 

heretofore  enjoyed Every  object,"  he 

continued,  "which  the  charter  to  the 
present  bank  was  designed  to  attain,  may 
be  as  effectually  accomplished  by  the 
State  banks."  Nothing  could  more 
strongly  mark  the  entirely  empirical 
character  of  this  measure  than  this  haz 
ardous  assertion ;  and  that  it  was  made 
and  acted  on,  exhibits  the  power  of  party 
over  the  judgments  of  public  men  in  a 
very  striking  light.  The  whole  expe 
rience  of  the  country  for  forty  years  had 
demonstrated  that  the  State  banks  were 
incapable  of  doing  for  the  community 
and  the  Government  what  the  Secretary 
here  claimed  for  them ;  and  a  very  short 
period  was  now  again  to  demonstrate  the 
same  thing.  The  truth  is,  that  of  disin 
terested  advisers  who  understood  this 
subject,  General  Jackson  had  not  one  in 
his  Cabinet.  If  there  was  ground  for 
the  opinion  that  a  national  bank,  consti 
tuted  as  the  existing  bank  was,  and  with 
such  powers  over  the  currency,  was  an 
instrument  that  could  be  used  for  politi 
cal  purposes,  the  true  corrective  for 
statesmen  to  apply  did  not  require  the 
commission  of  such  a  blunder  as  sudden 
ly  throwing  the  public  deposits  into  the 
hands  of  the  State  banks,  upon  the  de 
lusive  idea  that  they  could  make  a  re 
liable  national  currency  by  the  operation 
of  their  contracts  with  each  other.  I  am 
aware  that  General  Jackson's  justifica- 


1833.] 


REMOVAL   OF  THE  DEPOSITS. 


481 


sued  upon  these  resolutions,  memorials  on  the  subject  were 
frequently  presented,  coming  from  every  part  of  the  country, 
representing  the  general  commercial  distress ;  assigning  the 
removal  of  the  deposits  as  the  cause,  and  praying  Congress  to 
direct  their  restoration  to  the  Bank  of  the  United  States.  The 
friends  of  the  Administration  in  the  Senate  denied  the  exist 
ence,  in  any  extraordinary  degree,  of  monetary  pressure,  and 
asserted  that  these  memorials  were  dictated  by  party  spirit,  or 
were  got  up  at  the  instance  of  the  bank.  Day  after  day  the 
Senate  resounded  with  charges  and  counter-charges,  inter 
mingled  with  debates  of  great  ability  and  scope  on  some  of  the 
financial  questions  involved.  In  this  attitude  of  affairs,  Mr. 
Webster  had  occasion,  on  the  20th  of  January,  to  present  a 
series  of  resolutions  passed  by  a  public  meeting  in  Boston,  which 
was  attended  by  members  of  both  the  political  parties,  and  con- 


tion  depends  upon  the  suggestion  that 
this  bank  was  so  powerful  and  so  deter 
mined  to  perpetuate  its  power,  that  it 
was  necessary  to  destroy  it  by  an  ex 
treme  measure,  coute  que  coute,  and  that 
nothing  less  than  a  direct  blow  such  as 
he  aimed  at  it,  would  have  answered  the 
necessary  purpose.  ,  But  leaving  out  of 
consideration  entirely  the  personal  feel 
ings  in  which  his  hostility  to  the  bank 
was  said  to  have  originated,  the  true 
answer  to  this  suggestion  is,  that  what 
ever  may  have  been  the  aims  of  the 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
conduct  of  its  chief  manager,  before 
the  removal  of  the  deposits,  its  charter 
could  have  been  extended,  or  another 
bank  could  have  been  created,  under 
provisions  which  would  have  obviated  all 
the  supposed  political  dangers.  The 
bank  that  was  presided  over  by  Nicholas 
Biddle  never  did,  and  never  could  have, 
exercised  so  much  power  as  to  prevent  a 
statesman  like  Mr.  Webster  from  incor 
porating  into  its  renewed  charter,  or  into 
the  charter  of  another  bank,  all  the  ne 
cessary  safeguards  which  the  purity  of 
elections  and  the  independence  of  public 
men  may  have  required.  Mr.  Webster  was 
always  ready  to  do  this,  and  no  one  can 
doubt  his  ability,  with  his  long  experience 
and  his  thorough  acquaintance  with  the 
subject  of  public  finance,  to  have  formed 
a  national  bank  that  would  have  con 
tinued  the  advantages  of  a  sound  national 
currency,  without  being  capable  of  being 
32 


made  the  political  instrument  of  a  party. 
But  such  were  the  prejudices  and  the 
state  of  crimination  and  recrimination 
excited  at  once  by  the  step  taken  by  the 
Administration,  that  Mr.  Webster,  in 
whose  impartiality  and  uprightness  the 
nation  would  in  any  other  condition  of 
the  public  mind  have  been  entirely  dis 
posed  to  confide,  could  effect  nothing  be 
yond  leaving  upon  record,  for  future 
guidance,  the  evidence  that  his  own 
principles  on  these  financial  questions 
were  the  true  ones.  The  result  was  that 
experiment  after  experiment,  to  which 
this  and  the  succeeding  Administration 
were  led,  failed  to  accomplish  any  thing 
of  importance  in  reference  to  the  cur 
rency  ;  that  a  state  of  prejudice  on  the 
question  of  a  national  bank  was  per 
petuated  until  it  became  impossible  to 
create  one ;  that  a  great  national  emer 
gency  afterward  found  us  without  a  na 
tional  currency  other  than  gold  and  sil 
ver,  and  drove  the  Government  into  the 
issue  of  a  currency  consisting  of  its  own 
paper  divorced  from  all  relation  to  the 
precious  metals  excepting  that  which  was 
to  be  measured  by  its  speculative  value 
as  a  promise  to  pay ;  and  that  we  have 
never  yet  reached  the  means  by  which 
the  paper  issues  of  private  corporations 
can  be  maintained  as  a  national  currency 
at  a  par  with  gold  and  silver,  or  even  be 
made  a  general  medium  of  exchange, 
without  being  enforced  by  the  direct 
credit  of  the  Government  itself. 


482  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

sisted  of  men  engaged  in  all  the  active  pursuits  of  life,  rec 
ommending,  as  the  appropriate  remedy  for  the  present  com 
mercial  distress,  a  restoration  of  the  relation  in  which  the  bank 
had  heretofore  stood  to  the  Government.  His  remarks,  in 
presenting  these  resolutions,  were  exceedingly  grave  and 
pointed,  but  without  any  asperity.  He  dealt  with  the  present 
condition  of  things  as  a  crisis  fraught  with  the  most  important 
issues  for  the  Government  and  the  community.  The  great  evil, 
he  said,  arose  from  the  new  attitude  in  which  the  Government 
had  placed  itself  toward  the  bank.  Every  thing  was  in  a  false 
position.  The  Government,  the  Bank  of  the  United  States, 
and  the  State  banks,  were  all  out  of  place,  deranged,  separated, 
and  jostling  against  each  other,  each  acting  on  the  defensive, 
and  the  public  interest  crushed  between  the  upper  and  nether 
millstones.  All  this  should  have  been  foreseen.  It  was  idle  to 
say  that  these  evils  might  have  been  prevented  by  the  bank,  if 
it  had  exerted  itself  to  prevent  them.  The  quarrel  was  an  un 
necessary  one  ;  and  it  was  one  that  had  given  a  great  shock  to 
the  whole  currency  system  of  the  country,  deranging  the  inter 
nal  exchanges,  which  had  hitherto  been  accomplished  by  the 
Bank  of  the  United  States  with  great  facility,  and  at  a  rate 
unprecedentedly  cheap. 

The  public  moneys,  he  continued,  were  now  out  of  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States,  and  in  the  custody  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  without  regulation  of  law,  to  be  kept  where  he 
pleased  and  as  he  pleased.  This  state  of  things  Congress  could 
not  suffer  to  remain.  His  own  opinion  was,  that  the  deposits 
should  be  restored  to  the  Bank  of  the  United  States.  This 
question  was  entirely  unconnected  with  the  controversy  whether 
that  bank  should  be  rechartered  or  any  new  one  created.  But 
looking  beyond  the  question  of  the  immediate  custody  of  the 
public  funds,  he  asked,  What  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  bank  as 
a  means  of  exercising  that  salutary  control  over  the  currency 
of  the  country  which  it  was  the  unquestionable  purpose  of  the 
Constitution  to  devolve  on  Congress?  There  were  but  four 
opinions  or  suggestions  as  to  what  might  thereafter  be  expected 
or  attempted.  One  was,  to  leave  things  as  they  stood,  with  the 
whole  subject  under  the  control  of  the  Executive  ;  another,  to 
do  away  with  paper  entirely,  leaving  only  a  metallic  currency. 


1884.]  REMOVAL  OF  THE  DEPOSITS.  483 

Both  of  these  he  dismissed  as  impracticable.  There  remained 
only  the  rechartering  of  the  present  bank,  or  the  creation  of  a 
new  one.  The  last  could  not  be  effected  before  March,  1836. 
Entertaining  the  opinion  that  a  well-conducted  national  insti 
tution  was  essential  to  guard  against  the  excessive  issues  of 
nearly  four  hundred  State  banks,  and  to  furnish  a  sound  and 
uniform  currency  to  every  part  of  the  United  States,  he  was 
ready  to  recharter  the  present  bank,  with  such  modifications  as 
would  meet  and  reconcile  the  different  states  of  opinion  on  the 
subject,  so  as  to  remove  all  reasonable  grounds  of  jealousy  in 
all  quarters.  These  suggestions,  he  declared,  were  made  with 
out  the  knowledge  of  the  bank,  and  with  no  understanding  or 
concert  with  any  of  its  friends,  or  with  any  one  heretofore  op 
posed  to  it.  In  conclusion,  he  demanded  of  those  who  proposed 
to  continue  the  discussion  concerning  the  removal  of  the  de 
posits,  to  let  the  country  see  their  plan  for  the  final  settlement 
of  the  present  difficulties. 

Such  in  substance  were  the  views  that  were  repeated  by  Mr. 
Webster  more  than  once,  as  he  had  occasion  to  speak  upon  the 
several  memorials  or  resolutions  of  public  bodies  that  were 
presented  by  others  or  by  himself.  He  tendered  to  the  oppo 
nents  of  the  bank,  to  the  Administration,  and  to  the  country, 
all  his  aid  in  reconstructing  the  bank  so  that  the  general  sense 
of  the  people  would  be  satisfied  that  the  Government  would 
have  a  safe  depositary  for  the  public  treasure,  an  important 
auxiliary  in  its  financial  operations,  and  a  sound  national  cur 
rency,  without  the  possibility  of  political  abuses  of  the  powers 
conferred. 

But  it  soon  became  apparent  that  his  aid  for  this  purpose 
was  not  wanted  by  those  who  had  the  power  to  obstruct  any 
such  healing  measure.  On  the  30th  of  January,  it  became 
evident,  from  some  remarks  made  by  Mr.  Wright,  one  of  the 
Senators  of  New  York,  that  the  Administration  had  determined 
that  the  public  moneys  should  remain  in  the  State  banks,  and 
that  the  public  revenues  should  be  collected  through  their 
agency ;  that  no  law  on  the  subject  should  be  passed,  and  that 
the  point  was  to  be  established  that  Congress  has  no  power  to 
create  a  national  bank.  This  aroused  all  Mr.  Webster's  energies. 
From  this  date  he  entered  into  the  discussion  of  the  whole  sub- 


484  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

ject  with  the  utmost  earnestness.  It  is  impossible  to  give  here 
a  detailed  account  of  the  speeches  which  he  made  in  the  course 
of  this  discussion,  which  lasted  until  the  adjournment  of  Con 
gress  in  June,  1834,  occupying  a  part  of  nearly  every  day. 
Between  the  20th  of  January  and  the  close  of  the  session,  he 
addressed  the  Senate  on  this  subject  sixty-four  times,  besides 
making  the  report  of  the  Committee  on  Finance  in  relation  to 
the  Secretary's  reasons  for  the  removal  of  the  deposits,  and 
delivering  his  great  speech  in  answer  to  the  Protest  which  the 
President  sent  to  the  Senate.  In  these  various  speeches  there 
is  embraced  a  most  extensive  range  of  subjects ;  comprehending 
practical  questions  of  finance  and  currency,  an  exposition  of 
the  constitutional  relations  between  the  different  departments 
of  our  Government,  and  a  searching  and  profound  analysis  of  the 
office  of  those  checks  and  balances  which  the  principles  of  civil 
liberty  have  established  as  barriers  against  the  encroachments 
of  arbitrary  power.  How  all  this  should  have  grown  out  of 
the  mere  executive  act  of  removing  the  public  moneys  from  the 
custody  of  one  bank  into  that  of  several  other  banks,  can  be 
understood  only  by  observing  the  character  of  the  pretensions 
asserted  by  the  Executive  Department,  and  the  necessity  that 
existed  for  resisting  them.  The  merely  financial  and  prudential 
features  of  this  controversy  would  not  alone  have  called  out  such 
a  discussion  of  the  principles  on  which  Mr.  "Webster  put  forth  his 
peculiar  powers.  But  the  President's  act  rendered  it  necessary, 
in  Mr.  Webster's  opinion,  for  the  Senate  to  express  its  firm  and 
decided  condemnation.  This  drew  from  the  President  claims 
of  executive  authority  so  high  and  transcendent,  that  an  answer 
to  them,  became  necessary  for  the  future  preservation  of  the 
•principles  of  constitutional  government.  The  whole  attitude 
of  affairs  was  not  unlike  some  of  the  collisions  between  Charles 
I.  and  his  Parliament,  and  it  produced  discussions  that  are  not 
less  important  than  were  those  memorable  debates,  in  which 
the  prerogatives  of  the  crown  came  into  conflict  with  the  rights 
of  the  legislature. 

On  the  4th  of  February,  Mr.  Clay's  second  resolution,  cen 
suring  as  unsatisfactory  and  insufficient  the  Secretary's  reasons 
for  removing  the  deposits  from  the  bank,  was  referred  to  the 
Committee  on  Finance.  On  the  5th  of  February,  Mr.  Webster 


1834.]  BILL  TO  RESTORE  THE  DEPOSITS.  485 

brought  in  the  report  of  the  committee.  It  embraced  a  full 
and  elaborate  examination  of  the  legal  relations  between  the 
Government  and  the  bank,  the  powers  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  and  the  reasons  which  he  had  assigned  for  the  re 
moval.  It  negatived  the  claim  of  the  Secretary  to  an  absolute 
and  unqualified  control  over  the  question  of  removal,  and  main 
tained  that  the  provision  of  the  law  which  required  him  to  give 
an  account  of  his  reasons  to  Congress,  constituted  Congress  the 
final  judge,  by  way  of  appeal,  of  all  his  reasons,  both  as  they 
affected  the  interests  of  the  bank  and  the  interests  of  the  pub 
lic.  After  an  elaborate  examination  of  the  Secretary's  reasons, 
the  report  concluded  with  a  recommendation  that  the  resolution 
referred  to  the  committee  be  adopted  by  the  Senate.  It  was 
finally  voted  upon  on  the  28th  of  March,  and  was  carried  by 
twenty-eight  yeas  against  eighteen  nays.  Immediately  after 
ward,  Mr.  Clay  modified  his  first  resolution,  which  was  then 
passed  by  twenty-six  yeas  against  twenty  nays,  in  the  following 
terms :  "  That  the  President,  in  the  late  executive  proceedings 
in  relation  to  the  public  revenue,  has  assumed  upon  himself 
authority  and  power  not  conferred  by  the  Constitution  and  laws, 
but  in  derogation  of  both." 

It  had  become  apparent  to  Mr.  "Webster,  before  the  middle 
of  March,  that  while  he  and  those  who  acted  with  him  could 
carry  a  measure  through  the  Senate,  nothing  could  be  done  for 
the  relief  of  the  country,  unless  the  President  and  a  majority 
of  the  House  of  Representatives  would  concur  in  what  might 
be  proposed.  The  Administration  would  do  nothing.  It  was  im 
portant,  therefore,  that  no  one  should  be  able  to  say  that  what 
was  to  be  proposed  by  an  opponent  of  the  Administration  would 
insure  the  continuance  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States ,  and  it  is 
important  now,  to  those  who  mean  to  understand  Mr.  Webster's 
course  on  this  subject,  to  know  that  he  meant  to  give  that  bank 
no  claim  to  a  renewal  of  its  charter,  by  the  bill  which  he  intro 
duced  on  the  18th  of  March.  It  was  the  purpose  of  this  bill  to 
give  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  sufficient  time  to  wind  up 
its  affairs,  without  distressing  the  public  by  a  too  rapid  collec 
tion  of  its  debts ;  to  have  the  public  deposits  restored  to  it  after 
the  1st  of  July,  subject  to  removal  at  any  time  by  order  of  Con 
gress  ;  and  to  reserve  to  Congress  perfect  liberty  to  create  any 


486  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XX. 

new  bank  at  any  time  after  March,  1836.  He  also  proposed, 
in  order  to  increase  the  circulation  of  gold  and  silver,  that, 
when  the  States  would  direct  their  own  banks  not  to  issue  notes 
of  a  less  denomination  than  five  dollars,  Congress  should  direct 
the  Bank  of  the  United  States  to  issue  no  notes  below  twenty 
dollars.  This  he  regarded  then,  and  always,  as  a  very  impor 
tant  object.  On  asking  leave  to  introduce  this  bill,  he  delivered 
an  impressive  speech,  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  fourth  volume 
of  his  Works,  and  which  he  closed  as  follows  : 

"  I  have  thus,  sir,  stated  my  opinions,  and  discharged  my  duty.  I  see 
the  country  laboring  and  struggling  and  panting  under  an  enormous 
political  evil.  I  propose  a  remedy  which  I  am  sure  will  produce  relief,  if 
it  be  adopted,  and  which  seems  to  me  most  likely  to  obtain  support.  And 
now,  sir,  I  put  it  to  every  member  of  Congress,  how  he  can  resist  this 
measure,  unless  by  proposing  another  and  a  better.  "Who,  among  the 
agents  and  servants  of  the  people  assembled  in  these  Houses,  is  prepared, 
in  the  present  distressed  state  of  the  country,  to  say  that  he  will  oppose 
every  thing  and  propose  nothing  ?  For  one,  sir,  I  can  only  say  that  I  have 
been  driven  to  this  proposition  by  an  irresistible  impulse  of  obligation  to 
the  country.  If  I  had  been  suddenly  called  to  my  great  reckoning  in  an 
other  world,  I  should  have  felt  that  one  duty  was  neglected,  if  I  had  had 
no  measure  to  recommend,  no  expedient  to  propose,  no  hope  to  hold  out 
to  this  suffering  community. 

"  As  to  the  success  of  this  bill,  sir,  or  any  other,  I  have  only  to  repeat 
what  I  have  so  often  said,  that  every  thing  rests  with  the  people  them 
selves.  In  the  distracted  state  of  the  public  counsels,  any  measure  of 
relief  can  only  be  obtained  by  the  decisive  demand  of  the  public  will. 

"  By  an  exercise  of  executive  power,  which  I  believe  to  be  illegal,  and 
'which  all  must  see  to  have  been  injurious,  by  an  unrelenting  adherence  to 
the  measure  which  has  thus  been  adopted,  in  spite  of  all  consequences, 
and  by  the  force  of  those  motives  which  influence  men  to  support  the 
measure,  though  they  entirely  disapprove  it,  the  country  is  brought  to  a 
condition  such  as  it  never  before  witnessed,  and  which  it  cannot  long  bear. 
But  it  is  not  a  condition  for  despair.  Nothing  will  ruin  the  country,  if  the 
people  themselves  will  undertake  its  safety,  and  nothing  can  save  it,  if 
they  leave  that  safety  in  any  hands  but  their  own. 

"  Would  to  God,  sir,  that  I  could  draw  around  me  all  these  twelve 
millions  of  people  !  Would  to  God  that  I  could  speak  audibly  to  every 
independent  elector  in  the  whole  land  !  I  would  not  say  to  them,  vainly 
and  arrogantly,  that  their  safety  and  happiness  require  the  adoption  of  any 
measure  recommended  by  me.  But  I  would  say  to  them,  with  the  sin- 
cerest  conviction  that  ever  animated  man's  heart,  that  their  safety  and 
happiness  do  require  their  own  prompt  and  patriotic  attention  to  the 


1834.]  PRESIDENT  JACKSON'S  PROTEST.  487 

public  concerns — their  own  honest  devotion  to  the  welfare  of  the  State.  I 
would  say  to  them  that  neither  this  measure,  nor  any  measure,  can  be 
adopted  except  by  the  cogent  and  persisting  action  of  popular  opinion.  I 
would  say  to  them  that  the  public  revenues  cannot  be  restored  to  their 
accustomed  custody,  that  they  cannot  be  again  placed  under  the  control 
of  Congress,  that  the  violation  of  law  cannot  be  redressed,  but  by  manifes 
tations,  not  to  be  mistaken,  of  public  sentiment.  I  would  say  to  them  that 
the  Constitution  and  the  laws,  their  own  rights  and  their  own  happiness, 
all  depend  on  themselves  ;  and,  if  they  esteem  these  of  any  value,  if  they 
were  not  too  dearly  bought  by  the  blood  of  their  fathers,  if  they  be  an 
inheritance  fit  to  be  transmitted  to  their  posterity,  I  would  beseech  them, 
I  would  beseech  them,  to  come  now  to  their  salvation." 

But  it  was  impossible  even  for  Mr.  Webster  to  remove  the 
vast  weight  of  executive  will  which  obstructed  every  measure 
that  sought  to  change  the  present  state  of  things.  The  Presi 
dent  had  determined  that  nothing  should  be  done.  In  this  de 
termination  he  was  supported  by  a  great  party,  in  which  some 
acted  from  conviction,  some  gave  up  their  convictions,  and  all 
were  fearful  that  any  yielding  would  be  accounted  a  political 
victory  over  their  chief;  yet  it  is  as  certain  as  the  motives  of 
any  statesman  can  be  made  certain  by  what  he  aims  to  do,  and 
by  the  spirit  in  which  he  acted,  that  Mr.  Webster,  throughout 
this  controversy,  sought  no  political  victory  over  General  Jack 
son.  He  regarded  the  President  as  a  man  who  had  precipi 
tated  the  country,  needlessly,  into  a  condition  from  which  it 
was  necessary  that  it  should  be  rescued.  To  rescue  it,  he 
would  have  given  his  aid  to  the  President,  cheerfully  and 
frankly,  as  he  gave  it  in  the  crisis  of  nullification.  But,  unfor 
tunately,  the  state  of  things  was  such  that  he  could  reach  the 
mind  of  the  President  only  as  he  could  reach  the  mind  of  the 
country,  namely,  from  his  place  in  the  Senate  ;  and,  whatever 
was  uttered  there,  came  to  the  President's  ear  mingled  with  the 
utterances  of  those  to  whom  he  felt  personal  hostility,  and  was 
associated  to  him  with  the  obnoxious  bank.  Demonstration, 
argument,  eloquence,  could  effect  nothing.  Mr.  Webster  did 
not  press  his  bill  to  a  vote,  because  a  vote  of  the  Senate,  sus 
taining  it,  would  have  led  to  no  practical  result. 

Another  event,  too,  of  a  character  entirely  unprecedented, 
soon  obliged  Mr.  Webster  to  deal  with  this  whole  controversy 
in  a  manner  in  which  he  had  not  hitherto  treated  it.  He  had 


488  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

concurred  in  the  vote  of  the  Senate  which  had  censured  the 
control  assumed  by  the  President  over  the  public  funds  as  a 
violation  of  the  Constitution ;  and,  as  the  reader  has  seen,  he 
had,  in  a  formal  report,  recommended  the  expression  of  that 
opinion  by  the  Senate.  On  the  17th  of  April  the  President 
sent  to  the  Senate  a  protest  against  that  proceeding.  This  was 
a  document  written  with  great  ability,  and  with  a  sustained 
dignity.  The  character  and  station  of  the  President,  and  his 
vast  popularity  and  influence,  gave  to  the  doctrines  embraced 
in  it  an  importance  which  they  could  not  have  had  if  advanced 
from  any  other  source. 

Our  country,  in  the  different  vicissitudes  through  which  it 
has  passed,  has  exhibited  very  striking  proofs  of  the  manner  in 
which  the  popular  power  forces  its  way  into  the  working  of  our 
Constitution,  alternately  raising  and  depressing  the  spheres  of 
its  several  departments.  When  the  executive  office  has  been 
filled  by  a  man  of  strong  characteristics  and  great  popularity, 
it  has  been  exalted  into  an  undue  and  unconstitutional  pre 
dominance  over  the  Legislature.  When  the  President  has  not 
been  a  man  of  extraordinary  force  of  character,  and  the  popular 
sympathy  has  been  with  Congress,  the  tendency  in  the  other 
direction  has  been  equally  marked,  and  Congress  has  absorbed 
the  executive  powers,  besides  exercising  its  own.  It  is  justly 
to  be  claimed  as  one  of  the  great  merits  of  all  that  Mr.  Webster 
has  left  to  us,  that  his  whole  public  career  was  mainly  occupied 
in  expounding  the  Constitution ;  that  his  doctrine  was  never  par 
tial  or  defective ;  that  he  gave  no  distorted  interpretations  ;  that 
he  elevated  no  department  at  the  expense  of  any  other  ;  that 
he  comprehended  and  ever  kept  in  view  the  just  relations  of 
all  parts  of  the  Constitution  ;  and  that  he  regarded  its  observ 
ance  as  paramount  to  all  other  considerations. 

General  Jackson's  Protest  embraced  claims  of  executive 
power  and  views  of  the  presidential  office,  which  had  never 
been  asserted  before  since  the  Constitution  was  established. 
Nothing  so  closely  resembling  the  prerogatives  of  English  kings, 
as  they  were  held  in  former  ages,  had  ever  been  broached 
in  this  country.  Construing  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  as  if  it  had  intended,  by  vesting  the  executive  power  in 
the  President,  and  by  placing  in  his  hands  the  power  of 


1834.]  PRESIDENT  JACKSON'S   PROTEST.  489 

appointment  to  office,  to  give  him  discretionary  control  over 
all  subordinate  executive  officers,  the  Protest  claimed  it  to  be 
the  right  and  duty  of  the  President,  by  virtue  of  his  general 
executive  power,  to  supervise  and  control  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  in  relation  to  the  custody  of  the  public  funds.  It 
thus  appeared  that,  in  the  judgment  of  the  President,  the  law 
establishing  the  bank  did  not,  and  could  not,  change  the  rela 
tion  between  the  President  and  the  Secretary ;  and  that,  not 
withstanding  the  law  had  vested  in  the  Secretary  the  power 
to  determine  whether  the  public  funds  were  to  be  removed 
from  the  bank,  on  reasons  to  be  rendered  to  Congress,  the 
President  could  interpose  his  own  judgment,  order  the  Secre 
tary  to  remove  the  deposits,  and  dismiss  him  from  office  if  he 
did  not  comply.  It  was  upon  this  ground,  chiefly,  that  the 
President  denied  the  right  of  the  Senate  to  censure  his  act ; 
and  that  he  protested  against  that  censure  as  an  unwarrantable 
interference  with  the  executive  power. 

A  true  judgment  cannot  be  formed  respecting  this  contro 
versy,  without  remembering  that  the  law  had  prescribed  a 
duty  to  be  performed  by  the  Secretary,  and  to  be  performed 
in  a  particular  manner.  The  President  did  not  deny  this; 
but  he  claimed  that  his  paramount  executive  authority  en 
abled  him  to  control  the  Secretary,  if  the  latter  did  not  act 
in  the  execution  of  the  law  as  the  President  thought  he  should 
act.  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  a  case  in  which  a  law  of 
Congress  could  more  explicitly  vest  in  a  subordinate  officer  a 
function  to  be  performed  by  him,  independent  of  the  President, 
than  had  been  done  in  this  case.  The  issue,  therefore,  between 
the  President  and  the  Senate  was,  whether  the  general  execu 
tive  power  of  the  President  is  of  such  a  character  that  legisla 
tion  cannot  direct  a  subordinate  officer  to  perform  duties  which 
are  executive  in  their  nature,  without  subjecting  that  officer, 
in  the  performance  of  those  duties,  to  the  control  of  the 
President. 

This  issue,  in  the  excitements  of  the  time,  was  more  or  less 
obscured  by  the  collateral  topics  and  personal  criminations  that 
attended  its  discussion.  A  debate  followed  the  reading  of  the 
President's  Protest,  which  did  not  satisfy  Mr,  "Webster's  concep 
tions  of  the  manner  in  which  it  should  be  met.  He  was  re- 


490  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XX. 

luctant  to  enter  again  into  the  subject,  for  the  occurrences  of 
the  last  session  were  fresh  in  his  recollection,  and  he  did  not 
desire,  from  public  reasons,  to  be  obliged  to  make  further  oppo 
sition  to  General  Jackson,  whose  hands  he  had  recently  sought 
to  strengthen  against  a  dangerous  attack  upon  the  Constitu 
tion.  But  the  Constitution  itself  was  ever  the  first  object  in 
his  thoughts,  the  one  constant  motive  of  all  his  public  acts, 
whenever  its  meaning  and  operation  were  called  in  question.  He 
regarded  the  President's  ideas  of  the  nature  and  extent  of  his 
authority  as  entirely  untenable.  The  personal  popularity  of  the 
President,  who  had  advanced  this  claim,  made  it  the  more  neces 
sary,  in  Mr.  Webster's  opinion,  that  it  should  be  answered  upon 
its  own  merits,  and  in  a  becoming  spirit.  After  listening  for 
some  days  to  a  very  unprofitable  and  angry  discussion  in  the 
Senate,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Jeremiah  Mason :  "  I  fear  I  shall  be 
obliged  to  make  a  speech  on  the  Protest.  I  have  heard  nothing, 
as  yet,  which  puts  the  case  on  such  grounds  as  you  and  I  should 
approve."  The  result  was  the  delivery  of  his  speech  on  the 
President's  Protest,  which  is  printed  in  the  fourth  volume  of  his 
"Works.1 

How  entirely  it  was  in  his  power  to  lift  himself  above  the 
heated  atmosphere  of  party,  in  the  discussion  of  topics  that 
involved  constructions  of  the  Constitution,  this  speech  is  a 
signal  proof.  The  most  important  of  the  doctrines  asserted  by 
the  Protest  related  to  the  nature  of  the  executive  power,  which 
the  Constitution  vests  in  the  President,  and  to  the  relation  of 
the  power  of  appointment  to  the  general  executive  function. 
According  to  the  Protest,  the  supreme  executive  of  the  Consti 
tution  is  a  department  in  which  is  vested  all  the  authority  for 
executing  the  laws  that  can  exist  in  any  government.  As  the 
laws  are  to  be  executed  by  public  agents,  the  Protest  derived 
the  power  of  their  appointment  from  the  general  executive 
power ;  and  from  the  same  source  it  deduced  the  power  of 
removing  them  from  office.  Hence  it  appeared  to  be  the  view 
of  the  Protest,  that  the  appointing  power,  being  originally  and 
'inherently  in  the  Executive,  and  including  the  power  of  re 
moval,  remained  absolutely  in  the  hands  of  the  President  ex 
cept  so  far  as  the  Constitution  has  restrained  it.  From  this 

1  Delivered  May  7,  1834. 


1834.]  THE  PRESIDENT'S  PROTEST  EXAMINED.  491 

position,  it  followed  that  the  Legislative  Department  cannot 
impose  upon  an  inferior  officer  the  performance  of  duties  which 
are  executive  in  their  nature,  so  that  he  shall  be  beyond  the 
control  of  the  President,  who  may  remove  him  from  office 
at  pleasure.  Reasoning  from  these  premises,  and  assuming, 
further,  that  the  custody  of  the  public  money  is  an  executive 
function — belonging  to  the  Executive  by  force  of  the  constitu 
tional  creation  and  nomination  of  that  department — the  Pro 
test,  which  claimed  authority  in  the  President  to  control  all 
public  officers  holding  the  public  funds,  necessarily  asserted 
that  Congress  could  not  place  the  money  of  the  Government 
where  its  custody  was  not  at  all  times  subject  to  the  will  of  the 
President. 

Mr.  Webster's  answer  to  this  doctrine  presents  a  view  of  the 
Constitution  which  must  at  all  times  be  regarded  as  of  the 
utmost  importance.  After  adverting  to  the  fact  that,  in  all  our 
American  constitutions,  as  in  other  governments,  the  general 
distribution  of  powers  into  the  legislative,  the  executive,  and  the 
judicial,  does  not  of  itself  fix  precise  definitions,  he  proceeded 
to  show  that  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  in  confer 
ring  powers  on  all  the  departments,  proceeds  by  specific  enu 
meration,  and  not  by  general  definition  of  what  constitutes  legis 
lative,  executive,  or  judicial  power.  The  general  principle  of 
the  distribution  is,  he  said,  of  inestimable  value,  but  the  Con 
stitution  does  not  give  a  general  definition  of  the  executive  any 
more  than  of  the  legislative  or  the  judicial  power.  We  are  to 
seek  for  the  extent  and  scope  of  each  of  these  departments  in 
the  specific  powers  which  the  Constitution  confers  upon  them. 
Following  this  rule,  it  will  be  found  that  the  denomination  of 
the  Executive  Department  does  not  necessarily  confer  upon  it 
the  power  of  appointment ;  but  that  this  power  is  the  subject 
of  a  specific  grant,  to  be  exercised  under  certain  restrictions, 
and  in  a  prescribed  mode ;  nor  does  it  follow,  from  the  Presi 
dent's  power  to  appoint  public  officers,  that  they  are,  and  must 
be,  under  the  Constitution,  removable  at  his  pleasure,  so  that 
Congress  cannot  regulate  the  tenure  of  office. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Protest,  that  the  custody  of  the  public 
money  belongs,  by  the  Constitution,  to  the  Executive,  was  all 
founded  on  the  asserted  power  of  the  President  over  those  who 


492  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cu.  XX. 

might  be  appointed  to  hold  that  custody.  It  amounted,  there 
fore,  to  the  practical  denial  of  all  power  in  Congress  to  place 
the  public  treasure  in  the  hands  of  officers  whom  the  President 
could  not  control ;  and  this  claim  was  asserted  in  it  in  express 
terms.  Having  shown  that  the  Constitution  did  not  vest  in 
the  President  absolute  control  over  all  public  officers,  so  that 
Congress  cannot  prevent  the  removal  of  an  incumbent  by  the 
President,  Mr.  Webster  contended  that,  whether  the  individual 
officer  is  to  be  changed  by  the  President,  or  is  to  be  removed 
only  as  Congress  may  prescribe  by  law,  it  is  entirely  competent 
for  Congress  to  direct  that  whoever  is  in  the  office  shall  perform 
its  duties  without  the  interference  of  the  President.  If  the 
President  may  change  the  officer,  the  duties  of  the  office  remain, 
and  they  must  be  performed  by  the  successor,  as  Congress  has 
by  law  directed  them  to  be  performed.  This  had  been  the 
state  of  the  case  in  regard  to  the  public  deposits,  which  the  law 
had  directed  to  be  kept  in  the  bank,  subject  to  removal  by  the 
Secretary,  for  reasons  which  he  was  to  render  to  Congress.  But 
the  President  had  not  left  this  duty  to  be  performed  by  the 
officer  as  the  law  required  it.  He  had  removed  one  officer  who 
would  not,  to  make  room  for  another  who  would,  change  the 
custody  of  the  public  money ;  and  he  had  publicly  declared  it 
to  be  his  own  act,  and  to  have  been  done  at  his  command.  That 
command,  rested  upon  the  paramount  control  of  the  supreme 
Executive  Magistrate  over  all  public  officers  and  upon  the  fur 
ther  claim  that  the  custody  of  the  public  money  is  necessarily 
an  executive  function,  was  what  Mr.  Webster  regarded  as  a 
violation  of  the  Constitution,  because  of  its  encroachments  on 
the  powers  of  the  Legislature. 

That  the  Senate,  as  one  of  the  branches  of  the  legislative 
power,  had  an  unquestionable  right,  and  was  bound  by  its 
duty,  to  defend  the  legislative  power,  and  that  it  could  do  so 
by  an  expression  of  its  opinion  on  any  act  of  the  Executive 
which  it  deemed  an  encroachment,  Mr.  Webster  held  to  be 
clear. 

The  residue  of  this  speech  was  devoted  to  a  refutation  of 
the  doctrine  put  forth  by  the  Protest,  that  the  President  is 
responsible  for  the  conduct  of  all  executive  officers,  and  may 
discharge  them  when  he  is  no  longer  willing  to  be  responsible 


1834.]  PERSONAL  RELATIONS  TO   THE  BANK.  493 

for  their  acts.  Misled  by  foreign  analogies,  as  Mr.  Webster  held 
the  writer  of  the  Protest  to  have  been,  it  was  necessary  to  point 
out  that  our  American  constitutions  are  not  checks  imposed 
upon  a  preexisting  authority,  but  that  they  are  grants  of  specific 
powers,  for  the  extent  of  which  we  are  to  look  to  the  grants 
themselves.  In  this  portion  of  the  speech  he  has  left  the  most 
important  guide  that  we  possess  for  the  discussion  of  our  Amer 
ican  questions  of  constitutional  power,  by  keeping  in  view  the 
broad  distinction  between  our  systems  and  the  precedents  or 
analogies  drawn  from  foreign  states. 

The  excitements  of  the  period  in  which  this  speech  was  de 
livered  have  passed  away,  and  another  generation  has  succeeded. 
More  than  thirty  years  have  elapsed  since  General  Jackson,  by 
the  mere  force  of  his  will,  could  cause  a  great  party  to  accept, 
for  the  moment,  the  doctrines  of  his  remarkable  protest.  But 
there  is  not  one  of  those  doctrines  that  has  survived  the  tem 
porary  passions  which  gave  them  a  brief  political  ascendency. 
They  have  received  no  subsequent  sanction  from  the  people 
of  this  country.  As  constructions  of  the  Constitution,  or  as 
explanations  of  the  nature  of  our  institutions,  and  the  dis 
tribution  of  political  functions,  they  have  been,  in  fact,  re 
jected  ;  and  they  stand  in  our  political  history  in  no  other 
rank  than  that  which  belongs  to  assertions  of  power  that  have 
derived  their  force  from  the  peculiarities  of  individual  charac 
ter,  backed  by  the  personal  devotion  of  a  party  to  whose  gen 
eral  political  creed  they  were  as  uncongenial  as  they  were  to  the 
spirit  of  the  age,  and  to  the  provisions  of  the  fundamental  law 
of  the  land. 

But  the  personal  and  temporary  triumph  of  General  Jack 
son  was  complete ;  for,  while  the  Senate  recorded  their  re 
jection  and  official  condemnation  of  the  doctrines  of  his  pro 
test,  there  was  no  legislation  effected,  at  this  session  of  Con 
gress,  restoring  the  public  deposits  to  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States,  or  controlling  in  any  way  the  financial  experiment 
which  the  Executive  Government  was  determined  should  be 
tried. 

Before  leaving  this  subject  of  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States,  it  is  proper  to  refer  to  a  base  attempt  that  was  made  to 
fasten  upon  Mr.  "Webster  an  imputation  of  interested  motives. 


494  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

It  is  rare  that  a  slander  of  this  kind  does  no  mischief.  Contem 
porary  refutation  or  rejection  seldom  does  the  work  of  complete 
vindication  to  all  whom  the  imputation  has  reached.  There  is, 
to  this  day,  a  vague  popular  belief  that  Mr.  Webster  was  under 
an  extraordinary  personal  bias  toward  the  bank,  which  colored 
all  his  opinions,  and  influenced  his  acts  on  this  occasion.  It  is 
so  clearly  my  duty  to  him,  and  to  the  influence  of  his  public 
principles,  to  notice  this  imputation,  that  my  readers  will  ex 
pect  no  other  reason  to  be  assigned  for  laying  before  them  the 
facts. 

It  had  happened  to  Mr.  "Webster,  in  former  years,  to  be 
employed  by  the  bank,  in  his  professional  capacity,  to  argue 
important  causes  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 
He  was  one  of  the  counsel  for  the  bank  in  the  celebrated  case 
of  McCullock  vs.  Maryland,  as  early  as  1819,  which  involved 
the  question  of  the  power  of  the  States  to  tax  the  bank  or  its 
branches  ;  and  he  had  been  engaged  by  the  bank  in  other 
causes  in  subsequent  years.  He  was  not  a  professional  adviser 
of  the  bank,  in  relation  to  its  application,  in  1831-'32,  for  a  re 
newal  of  its  charter.  His  correspondence  with  Mr.  Biddle,  its 
president,  at  that  time  and  subsequently,  is  in  my  hands ;  and 
it  was  solely  in  his  public  capacity,  as  a  Senator  of  the  United 
States,  who  held  that  the  public  interest  demanded  the  exist 
ence  of  such  an  institution,  that  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Biddle  for 
information,  or  received  any  letters  from  him.  In  his  former 
occasional  relation  of  an  advocate,  in  certain  causes  in  which 
the  bank  had  an  interest,  all  men  could  see  that  the  weight  of 
obligation  must  have  been  on  the  side  of  the  bank  ;  and  it  must 
have  required  a  high  degree  of  credulity  and  prejudice  for  any 
man  to  have  supposed  that  it  was  a  matter  of  any  personal  im 
portance  to  Mr.  Webster  whether  this  bank  was  to  be  continued 
in  existence,  or  whether  its  capital  was  to  take  some  other  form 
of  investment,  unless  he  was  one  of  its  debtors.  But  there  is 
always,  among  a  part  of  mankind,  a  great  amount  of  both 
credulity  and  prejudice.  What  it  received  and  listened  to  on 
this  occasion  had  an  origin ;  and,  as  not  unusually  happens,  the 
imputation  became  transformed  in  shape  and  substance,  until 
what  was  originally  intended  as  a  charge  of  having  received 
exorbitant  fees  as  counsel,  amounting  to  bribes  for  his  public 


1834.]  PERSONAL  RELATIONS  TO   THE  BANK.  495 

influence,  was  converted  into  the  statement  that  he  was  an  ex 
traordinary  debtor  to  the  bank.  For  neither  of  these  imputa 
tions  was  there  any  rational  foundation.  Mr.  Webster  was  too 
wise  and  circumspect,  and  too  great  a  man,  to  place  himself 
under  peculiar  obligations  to  any  corporation  which  might 
have  interests  liable  to  be  acted  upon  by  him  in  his  public 
capacity ;  and  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  he  never  was  influenced, 
in  any  public  act  or  opinion,  by  any  private  relation  that  may 
have  subsisted  even  between  himself  and  any  portion  of  his 
immediate  constituents  or  of  his  personal  friends.  I  am 
not  unconscious  of  what  this  remark  implies  ;  and  here 
after  I  shall  proceed  to  justify  it,  in  relation  to  another 
topic,  concerning  which  full  information  will  be  given  to 
my  readers.  At  present,  I  must  ask  their  attention  to  the 
miserable  origin  of  the  particular  charge  that  is  here  ad 
verted  to. 

On  the  17th  of  March,  1834,  the  Yice-President,  Mr.  Yan 
Buren,  communicated  to  the  Senate  a  paper  containing  the 
proceedings  and  resolutions  of  a  meeting,  held  in  York  County, 
Pennsylvania,  by  "  friends  of  the  Administration,"  in  favor  of 
the  removal  of  the  deposits  from  the  Bank  of  the  United  States, 
and  against  the  recharter  of  that  institution.  Mr.  "Webster  had 
been  furnished  with  evidence,  from  the  same  locality,  that  this 
paper  misrepresented  the  sentiments  not  only  of  the  bulk  of  the 
people  in  the  county,  but  of  the  persons  who  attended  the  meet 
ing  ;  and  he  presented  this  evidence  to  the  Senate.  A  discus 
sion  thereupon  ensued,  in  the  course  of  which  Mr.  Poindexter, 
of  Mississippi,  made  known  the  fact  that,  when  this  paper 
reached  the  hands  of  the  Yice-President,  it  contained,  as  part 
of  its  preamble,  a  gross  libel  on  Mr.  Webster,  which  had  been 
stricken  from  it  before  it  was  presented  by  the  Chair.  Ex 
planations  were  then  made,  from  which  it  appeared  that  the 
Yice-President  had  pointed  out  the  offensive  paragraph  to  the 
Senators  from  Pennsylvania,  and  that  it  had  been  stricken 
out  by  them.  It  was  read  in  the  Senate,  Mr.  Webster  himself 
calling  for  it,  and  was  in  these  words  : 

"  One  word  in  conclusion.  Daniel  Webster,  now  a  Senator,  and  a 
champion  of  the  bank,  was,  at  its  creation,  a  member  of  the  House  of  Rep 
resentatives.  Then  the  bank  was  not  his  client,  and  he  was  opposed  to 


496  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XX. 

it.  His  unbiassed  opinion,  as  a  representative  of  the  people,  was  in  direct 
opposition  to  what  he  now  holds  ;  but  now  he  is  '  concerned  for  the  bank ' 
(in  legal  phraseology),  and  no  doubt  finds  it  a  good  fat  client,  as  it  has 
already  disposed  of  more  than  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  the  shape  of  fees. 
In  1816  he  was  alarmed  at  the  dangerous  powers  such  an  institution  could 
make  its  own,  and  he  raised  his  voice  for  a  sounder  currency  than  mere 
'  promises  to  pay,'  with  nothing  wherewith  to  fulfil  such  promises.  He 
then  said,  '  Gold  and  silver  currency  was  the  law  of  the  land  at  home,  and 
the  law  of  the  world  abroad ;  and  that,  in  the  present  state  of  the  world, 
there  could  be  no  other  currency.' " 

Mr.  Webster,  thereupon,  rose  and  said  : 

"  That  he  had  been  informed  that  a  statement  of  the  proceedings  of 
this  meeting  would  be  presented,  and  that  it  would  present  an  altogether 
false  account  of  it ;  and  he  was  requested  to  lay  the  evidence  of  this  mis 
representation  before  the  Senate.  He  had  been  told,  at  the  same  time, 
that  there  was  one  part  of  the  paper,  about  to  be  presented,  which  con 
tained  matter  scandalous  in  reference  to  himself.  He  had  said  then,  what 
he  had  always  felt,  that  he  felt  much  reluctance  in  laying  this  evidence 
before  the  Senate,  because  he  should  have  regarded  it  as  more  consistent 
with  self-respect  to  have  taken  no  notice  of  such  idle  and  ridiculous  scan 
dal.  He  had  consented,  however,  to  lay  the  paper  in  his  hand  before  the 
Senate,  knowing  that  the  sentiments  of  the  respectable  citizens  of  York 
would  be  misrepresented  here  by  this  truly  miserable  statement  of  the  pro 
ceedings. 

"  He  considered  it  due  to  the  Vice-President  to  say,  that  he  was  this 
morning  informed  by  that  gentleman  of  the  offensive  character  of  the  refer 
ence  to  himself.  He  had  told  the  presiding  officer  he  was  aware  of  the 
existence  of  the  offensive  paragraph,  and  that  he  considered  it  unimpor 
tant  whether  it  was  read  qr  not.  The  presiding  officer  had  said  that  the 
paragraph  was  highly  improper,  and  that  he  would  not  present  the  pro 
ceedings  unless  this  part  of  them  was  stricken  out.  When  the  paper  was 
read,  he  had  not  heard  the  offensive  clause,  and,  of  course,  he  concluded 
that  it  had  been  expunged.  As  to  the  resolutions,  he  had  not  read  them, 
or  seen  them,  until  to-day.  He  considered  them  as  obnoxious  to  the 
charges  which  the  Senator  from  Mississippi  had  alleged  against  them. 
They  did  contain  offensive  imputations  as  to  members  of  the  Senate.  But, 
as  this  was  a  subject  which  would  take  up  some  time,  he  would,  if  the 
gentleman  from  Mississippi  had  no  objection,  move  to  lay  the  proceedings 
on  the  table,  to  give  the  Senators  from  Pennsylvania  time  to  look  into  the 
character  of  the  statement.  If  they  should  afterward  determine  to  renew 
the  motion  to  refer  and  print,  the  further  discussion  of  the  matter  might 
then  take  place." 

A  debate,  however,  followed  upon  the  question  of  receiving 


1834.]  PERSONAL  RELATIONS  TO  THE  BANK.  497 

the  paper  at  all,  in  tlie  course  of  which  the  Yice-President  and 
the  Senators  from  Pennsylvania  made  further  explanations  of 
their  respective  agencies  in  having  the  paper  modified  before  it 
was  sent  to  the  Senate.  On  all  sides  the  greatest  respect  was 
manifested  toward  Mr.  Webster  ;  and  those  who  caused  the 
offensive  paragraph  to  be  stricken  out  were  very  explicit  in 
their  declarations  that  they  had  assumed  a  questionable  respon 
sibility  in  relation  to  a  paper  that  fell  within  the  category  of 
petitions,  because  it  contained  grossly  indecent  imputations 
against  a  member  of  the  Senate.  It  was  finally  rejected  by  a 
decisive  vote. 

Such  were  the  contemptible  source  and  shape  of  the  charge 
that  Mr.  Webster  was  acting  under  a  bias  as  the  paid  advocate 
of  the  bank,  and  such  was  the  manner  in  which  this  charge 
first  came  into  public  notice.  It  was  a  charge  made  by  low 
politicians  of  a  distant  borough,  prompted  or  unprompted,  and 
calling  themselves  "friends  of  the  Administration."  It  was 
not  much  more  than  a  twelvemonth  since  that  Administration 
had  been  obliged  to  ask  this  great  statesman's  aid  in  a  perilous 
crisis  of  its  affairs ;  and  well  might  public  men  of  honor  and 
character,  who  were  in  his  presence,  blush  for  the  baseness  of 
their  partisans.  But  official  rebuke  of  such  a  slander  does  not 
kill  it.  It  possesses  a  vitality  that  can  adapt  itself  to  other 
shapes  ;  and  it  soon  came  to  be  said,  that  although  the  charge 
that  the  bank  was  his  "  client "  could  not  shake  public  confi 
dence  in  Mr.  Webster,  the  fact  that  the  bank  was  his  "  creditor  " 
was,  at  all  events,  good  ground  of  attack.  In  this  form  the  cal 
umny  has  still  perhaps  living  believers.1  They  may  be  gratified 
to  know,  under  his  own  hand,  precisely  what  his  pecuniary  rela 
tion  to  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  was  then,  and  had  been 
previously.  Two  letters  are  extant,  in  which  he  has  taken 
notice  of  this  form  of  the  imputation.  One  of  them  was  ad 
dressed  to  Mr.  Everett,  who  was  at  the  time  serving  on  a  com 
mittee  of  the  House  of  Representatives  to  investigate  the  con 
dition  of  the  bank.  It  has  been  published  heretofore.  The 

1  I  am  inclined  to  think  that,  in  re-  sometimes  heard  Mr.  Webster's  indebt- 
spect  to  sums,  the  supposed  disburse-  ment  to  the  bank  stated  at  the  sum  of 
ments  of  the  bank,  in  the  shape  of  fees,  fifty-six  thousand  dollars,  by  persons 
assumed  by  the  politicians  of  "  York,"  who  were  children  when  the  events  de- 
became,  traditionally,  loans.  I  have  scribed  in  the  text  occurred. 
33 


498  LIFE   OF  DAXIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XX. 

other  was  a  private  letter,  in  answer  to  a  gentleman  in  New 
Hampshire,  an  old  college  friend  of  Mr.  Webster,  but  a  political 
opponent,  who  had  occasion,  in  the  autumn  of  this  year,  to  bor 
row  money  at  the  Branch  Bank  of  the  United  States,  in  Bo'ston. 
I  believe  it  has  not  been  made  public  before. 


[TO  ME.   EVERETT.] 

"  WASHINGTON-,  April  26, 1834. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  am  obliged  to  you  for  your  letter  of  the  23d.  If,  in 
the  course  of  your  investigations,  the  committee  should  incline  to  notice 
my  name,  I  wish  you  to  state,  on  my  authority,  that  I  never  had  any  particu 
lar  or  unusual  accommodation  from  the  "bank  to  the  amount  of  a  single 
dollar ;  that,  since  I  went  to  Boston,  in  1817, 1  have  kept  my  account  and 
done  my  necessary  banking  business  at  the  Boston  office ;  and  notes,  bills 
of  exchange,  etc.,  etc.,  with  my  name  on  them,  have  been  collected  and 
discounted,  etc.,  as  often  as  occasion  required,  precisely  as  would  have 
been  done  in  the  case  of  any  other  person,  and  not  otherwise.  I  hear  re 
ports  of  mortgages,  standing  loans,  etc.,  etc.,  between  the  bank  and  my 
self,  in  all  of  which  there  is  not  a  single  word  of  truth.  I  never  gave  the 
bank  any  mortgage,  and  never  had  any  standing  loan  or  any  other  accom 
modation,  except  in  the  way  of  discount  of  bills  and  notes,  as  at  other 
banks. 

"As  to  Mr.  Council's  notes,  etc.,  they  arose  in  a  strictly  professional 
transaction.  He  obtained  the  agency  of  the  claims  of  our  Boston  mer 
chants  and  insurance  offices  under  the  French  treaty.  They  made  it  a  con 
dition  of  the  bargain,  that  he  should  secure  my  professional  services  in  all 
cases ;  and,  having  the  agency  for  a  vast  amount  of  other  claims,  Mr.  Con- 
nell  engaged  my  professional  aid  in  the  whole  as  matter  of  contract,  and 
the  notes  were  given  in  pursuance  of  this  contract.1  That  is  the  whole 
matter.  You  may  make  any  use  of  these  facts,  public  or  private,  which 
you  deem  proper.  .  .  . 

"  Yours  truly  ever, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

[TO  MR.   HUBBARD.] 

"BOSTON,  November  18, 1834. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  received  your  two  letters.  The  note  accom 
panying  the  last  I  have  indorsed,  and  sent  to  the  bank,  where  it  will  be 
doubtless  discounted,  according  to  your  wishes. 

"  Will  you  allow  me  to  say,  my  dear  sir,  that  I  had  one  objection, 

1  This  refers  to  professional  services  distribute  the  money  to  claimants  under 
before  the  commissioners  appointed  to  the  treaty. 


1834.]  RISE  OF  THE  WHIG  PARTY.  499 

though  a  trifling  one,  to  indorsing  your  note.  You  know  what  stories 
have  been  circulated  (and  nowhere  more  diligently  than  in  New  Hamp 
shire)  of  my  pecuniary  obligations  to  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  heavy 
mortgages,  etc.,  etc.  Now,  the  truth  is,  that  the  bank  never  discounted  or 
advanced  to  me  a  cent  in  the  world,  except  in  the  ordinary  way  as  they 
have  done  for  others  ;  and,  at  this  moment,  the  indorsement  of  your  note, 
and  one  other  signed  by  another  gentleman,  constitutes  nearly,  if  not  en 
tirely,  my  whole  liability  to  the  bank ;  and,  to  put  an  end  to  such  slan 
ders,  and  to  have  been  enabled  myself  to  say  that  the  bank  did  not  hold 
my  name  for  a  dollar,  I  should,  perhaps,  if  you  had  lived  here,  have  sug 
gested  to  you  the  obtaining  of  some  other  name  instead  of  my  own.  But, 
as  you  lived  in  the  country,  it  might  have  been  inconvenient  to  you ;  and, 
after  all,  I  suppose  there  would  be  just  as  much  libellous  matter  published, 
let  the  facts  be  one  way  or  the  other.  Mr.  Frothingham  will  probably 
write  you.  I  hope  you  will  find  the  rogue  that  took  such  liberties  with 
your  name. 

"  Yours  with  regard, 

"  DANL.  WEBSTER. 
"  Hon.  Henry  Hubbard, 
"  Charlestown,  New  Hampshire." 

It  was  at  this  period  that  the  term  "  Whigs "  sprang  into 
use,  as  a  designation  of  that  portion  of  the  people  who  were 
opposed  to  the  high  prerogative  ideas  of  the  executive  office 
which  General  Jackson  and  his  friends  maintained,  and  who 
sought  to  uphold  the  proper  functions  of  the  Legislature 
against  executive  encroachments.  The  party  which  had  sup 
ported  Mr.  Clay  for  the  presidency  in  the  election  of  1832, 
known  as  National  Republicans,  naturally  remained  in  oppo 
sition  to  his  successful  rival.  But  the  name  of  their  party  had 
never  been  significant  of  any  well-defined  political  principles, 
and  it  was  no  longer  suited  to  the  circumstances  of  the  times. 
In  those  circumstances,  it  was  now  felt  instinctively  that,  in 
the  existing  struggle  between  the  parties  actually  arrayed 
against  each  other,  and  in  the  principles  and  doctrines  of 
those  who  were  in  power,  there  was  a  peculiar  fitness  in  the 
revival  of  a  term  which,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  had 
been  historically  associated  with  the  side  of  liberty  against 
the  side  of  power.  This  revival  of  the  name  of  Whigs  was 
sudden,  and  it  was  a  spontaneous  popular  movement.  In 
progress  of  time,  it  enabled  the  public  men  who  were  lead 
ing  the  opposition  to  the  party  of  the  Administration  to  con- 


500  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX. 

solidate  an  organization  of  distinct  political  principles,  and 
to  strengthen  it  by  accessions  from  those  who  had  found 
reason  to  be  dissatisfied  with  the  opinions  prevailing  among 
the  friends  of  the  President.  From  this  period,  in  all  his 
party  relations,  Mr.  Webster  was  known  as  one  of  the  great 
leaders  of  the  "Whigs. 


1835.]    NOMINATED  FOR  THE  PRESIDENCY,  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.      501 


CHAPTEE   XXI. 
1834-1835. 

NOMINATED    FOR    THE   PRESIDENCY   BY   THE  WHIGS    OF    MASSACHU 
SETTS — VARIOUS    POPULAR     DEMONSTRATIONS   IN   OTHER   STATES 

CORRESPONDENCE  WITH   THE   ANTIMASONS    OF   PENNSYLVANIA 

— GENERAL  HARRISON  NOMINATED  BY  THE  WHOLE  OPPOSITION 
IN  PENNSYLVANIA DIFFICULTIES  WITH  FRANCE WAR  AVERT 
ED DEFEAT  OF  THE  FORTIFICATION  BILL FRENCH  SPOLI 
ATIONS  BEFORE  1800 SPEECH  ON  THE  POWER  OF  REMOVAL 

FROM     OFFICE — MR.     BENTON?S     "  EXPUNGING  "     RESOLUTION 

REGULATION  RESPECTING  TREASURY  DRAFTS  ON  THE  DEPOSIT 
BANKS. 

SUCH  a  session  of  Congress  as  that  described  in  the  last 
chapter  could  have  had  no  other  effect  than  to  develop 
parties,  and  to  bring  about  a  designation  of  candidates  for  the 
presidency.  The  separation  of  Mr.  Calhoun  from  General 
Jackson,  long  since  complete,  and  the  avowed  wishes  of  the 
latter  to  make  Mr.  Yan  Buren  his  successor,  left  scarcely  any 
doubt  that  Mr.  Yan  Buren  would  be  the  candidate  of  the  party 
which  supported  the  Administration.  Among  the  opposition, 
Mr.  Webster  was  the  person  most  naturally  to  be  regarded  as 
the  first  choice.  Mr.  Clay  was  scarcely  in  a  position  to  be 
selected  a  second  time,  immediately  after  his  unsuccessful  can 
didacy  of  1832 ;  and  if  he  was  to  be  regarded  as  out  of  the 
question,  on  this  occasion,  the  opposition  had  no  statesman 
who  was  for  a  moment  to  be  compared  to  Mr.  Webster,  in  re 
spect  to  ability,  to  past  services,  to  reputation,  and  to  popular- 


502  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXI. 

ity.  The  tendencies  of  thoughtful  men  in  different  quarters  of 
the  Union  toward  Mr.  "Webster,  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of 
1834,  are  abundantly  proved  by  the  mass  of  correspondence 
that  lies  before  me,  which  shows  that  nothing  was  wanting  to 
the  opposition,  in  order  to  have  made  him  their  candidate,  but 
a  compact  organization,  and  a  definite  unity  of  political  objects. 
But  the  opposition  was  composed  of  heterogeneous  materials. 
The  National  .Republican  party  of  1832  had  been  embarrassed 
by  antimasonry.  The  "Whig  party,  which  was  substantially 
identical  with  the  National  Republican,  was  now  embarrassed 
by  the  same  cause ;  for  men  who  earnestly  desired  to  change 
the  administration  of  the  national  Government,  and  who  con 
demned  the  measures  of  General  Jackson  and  his  political  sup 
porters,  still  thought  it  necessary  to  worry  themselves  and  to 
vex  the  politics  of  the  country  about  "  secret  societies,"  to 
maintain  a  special  party  for  this  purpose,  and  to  withhold  their 
cooperation  from  all  public  men  who  did  not  regard  this  topic 
as  of  the  first  importance. 

In  Massachusetts,  where  the  party  of  General  Jackson, 
which  now  became  known  as  the  Democratic  party,  had  never 
been  very  strong,  there  was  an  almost  universal  desire  to  take 
some  step  which  would  place  Mr.  "Webster  in  a  position  to  be 
regarded  through  the  country  as  the  candidate  of  the  whole 
opposition.  But  the  "Whigs  had  not  yet  devised  for  themselves 
the  machinery  of  a  national  nominating  convention.  No  such 
meeting  was  contemplated ;  and,  if  it  had  been  contemplated, 
the  existence  of  the  third  party  of  Antimasonry  would  have 
been  a  serious  obstacle  to  its  harmonious  action.  The  only 
step  that  could  be  taken  by  the  Whigs  of  Massachusetts  was, 
to  nominate  Mr.  Webster  for  the  presidency  by  a  legislative 
caucus.  In  the  Legislature  they  were  the  strongest  of  all  the 
parties  in  numbers  and  in  weight  of  character ;  and  it  was  sup 
posed  at  this  time  that  such  a  nomination,  proceeding  from 
Massachusetts  as  the  general  voice  of  her  people,  would  be  fol 
lowed  by  similar  movements  in  other  States. 

The  following  letters,  selected  from  Mr.  "Webster's  most 
confidential  correspondence  with  his  personal  friends,  relate  to 
this  movement  and  its  consequences : 


1835.]  PRESIDENTIAL  NOMINATION.  503 

[TO  MB.   MASON.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  1, 1835. 

"  DEAB  SIB  :  Whether  it  is  or  will  be  best  for  Massachusetts  to  act  at 
all  on  the  subject  of  a  nomination,  is  a  question  which  I  leave  entirely  to 
the  judgment  of  others.  I  cannot  say  that  I  have  any  personal  wishes 
about  it,  either  one  way  or  the  other.  A  nomination  by  Massachusetts 
would  certainly  be  one  of  the  highest  proofs  of  regard  which  any  citizen 
can  receive.  As  such,  I  should  most  undoubtedly  esteem  it.  But,  in  the 
present  condition  of  things,  and  with  the  prospects  which  are  before  us,  a 
nomination  is  a  questionable  thing  to  one  who  is  more  desirous  of  preserv 
ing  what  little  reputation  he  has  than  anxious  to  grasp  at  further  distinc 
tion.  I  have  made  up  my  mind,  however,  to  be  passive,  and  shall  be 
satisfied  with  any  result. 

"  But  I  have  a  clear  opinion  on  one  point ;  and,  as  I  promised  you  to 
communicate  my  sentiments  freely,  I  will  state  that  opinion  frankly.  It 
is,  that  if  Massachusetts  is  to  act  at  all,  the  time  Tias  come.  I  think  the  pro 
ceeding,  if  one  is  to  be  had,  should  be  one  of  the  first  objects  of  attention 
when  the  Legislature  assembles.  In  Ohio,  Mr.  McLean  is  already  nomi 
nated,  I  presume,  according  to  late  accounts.  Many  Whigs,  who  do  not 
prefer  him,  fall  into  the  measure  (in  Ohio)  simply  because  they  have  no 
other  choice.  It  is  expected,  or  at  least  hoped,  that  New  Jersey  will  sec 
ond  this  nomination.  Movements  are  in  preparation  in  other  places ;  but, 
as  far  as  I  know,  nothing  is  yet  proposed  anywhere  in  which  there  could 
be  a  general  union,  or  in  which  Massachusetts  would  be  likely  to  agree. 

"If  a  resolution  to  make  a  movement  in  Massachusetts  should  be 
adopted,  not  only  should  the  thing  itself  be  done  as  soon  as  practicable, 
but  in  the  mean  time  notice  of  the  intention  should  be  given  to  friends  in 
the  neighboring  States,  and  especially  in  New  York,  that  they  may  pre 
pare  for  it.  Let  us  know  here  the  moment  any  thing  is  determined  on. 

"  It  looks  at  present  as  if  Mr.  Clay  would  not  do  or  say  any  thing.  He 
declares  himself  in  nobody's  way ;  but  still  it  is  evident  that  his  particular 
friends  are  not  prepared  to  act  heartily  and  efficiently  for  anybody  else. 

"  Be  sure  to  twrn  this  letter,  and  assure  yourself  also  that  I  write  such 
letters  to  nobody  else. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"D.  WEBSTEB. 

"  The  committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives  will  not  report  in 
conformity  to  the  recommendation  of  the  message  on  French  affairs. 
Probably  no  report  will  be  made,  till  further  intelligence  from  France." 

[FBOM  MB.  ABBOTT  LAWBENCE.] 

"  BOSTON,  January  5, 1835. 

"  MY  DEAB  SIB  :  I  wish  I  could  see  you  for  ten  minutes,  that  I  might 
say  to  you  many  things  that  cannot  be  written.  Yet,  I  cannot  omit  the 


504  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXI. 

present  time  to  say  that  I  have  been  called  upon  within  the  last  few  days 
by  many  prominent  individuals  (your  particular  friends),  who  would  be 
glad  to  know  your  wishes  in  relation  to  the  future. 

"  There  is  a  strong  disposition  to  make  a  nomination  early,  by  a  Legis 
lative  caucus,  of  President  of  the  United  States.  This  will  take  place  be 
yond  a  doubt,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  other  States  may  follow  in  the  course 
of  the  winter.  Supposing  such  an  event  to  take  place,  is  it  your  intention 
to  resign  your  seat  in  the  Senate  ?  If  you  have  not  made  up  your  mind  on 
this  point,  your  friends  here  hope  you  will  not  do  so  without  very  mature 
deliberation,  as  your  services  in  the  Senate  appear  to  be  almost  indispen 
sable  during  this  and  the  next  session  of  Congress.  I  know  full  well  that 
your  sacrifices  have  been  great,  and  I  am  the  last  individual  to  require  of 
you  a  continuance  of  them  if,  in  your  judgment,  your  interests  are  to  be 
promoted  by  retirement ;  at  present  I  am  not  clear  upon  this  point.  There 
is  hardly  any  thing,  I  believe,  that  your  friends  will  not  be  ready  to  do 
in  either  case,  whether  you  remain  or  whether  you  retire.  I  ask  now, 
in  candor  and  frankness,  and  in  perfect  confidence,  as  I  have  consulted 
with  but  one  individual,  in  case  your  sacrifices  professionally  can  be  made 
more  reasonable,  whether  you  do  not  think  it  will  be  best,  all  things  con 
sidered,  to  remain  in  your  present  situation  till  we  see  how  matters  stand 
a  year  hence,  and  then  take  such  a  course  as  circumstances  may  make  ex 
pedient.  I  do  not  see  that  it  is  incumbent  on  you  to  resign  in  conse 
quence  of  your  nomination ;  perhaps,  however,  I  may  not  see  the  whole 
ground.  Others,  I  find,  have  the  same  opinion. 

"  You  have  doubtless  marked  out  a  course  of  action  for  yourself.  I 
would  not  certainly  undertake  to  divert  you  from  it,  as  you  have  much 
more  practical  wisdom  upon  these  matters  than  myself.  I  esteem  the 
point  at  which  you  have  arrived,  however,  one  of  vast  moment  to  the  coun 
try  as  well  as  to  yourself,  and  feel  an  indescribable  interest,  that  nothing 
should  be  done  by  which  yourself  or  your  friends  shall  hereafter  feel  that 
a  mistake  was  made  at  this  particular  period  of  your  political  life. 

"  If  you  can  do  yourself  politically  more  good  by  retirement,  you  can 
promote  the  good  of  the  country  by  the  same  course.  I  leave  the  subject 
with  a  hope  that,  whatever  your  decision  may  be,  it  will  be  one  which  will 
lead  to  a  life  devoted  to  the  public  interest.  This  should  be  your  destiny, 
and  your  friends  ought  in  justice  to  do  for  you  all  that  may  be  required. 

"  I  remain,  dear  sir, 

"  Truly  yours, 

"A.  L." 

[TO  MB.  MASON.] 

"WASHINGTON,  January  10, 1835. 

"  DEAR  SIB  :  I  have  received  your  letter  of  the  4th.  It  seems  gen 
erally  understood  here,  that  a  nomination  will  be  forthwith  made  in 
Boston.  The  proceedings  in  Ohio  seem  to  make  it  necessary ;  and  I  believe 


1835.]  PRESIDENTIAL  NOMINATION.  505 

friends  here  have  found  it  expedient  to  signify  to  gentlemen  in  differ 
ent  parts  of  the  country  what  may  be  expected  to  transpire  in  Massa 
chusetts. 

"  On  the  subject  of  Senator,  I  have  said  little,  and  nothing  publicly ; 
as  all  the  gentlemen  who  have  been  named  are  quite  fit  for  the  place, 
and  would  do  credit  to  the  State.  Since  you  ask  my  private  opinion, 
however,  I  am  willing  to  say,  in  entire  confidence,  what  I  think  about  the 
question. 

"There  is  no  man  who  can  come  into  the  Senate,  in  my  opinion, 
with  so  much  prospect  of  being  useful  as  Governor  Davis.  He  is  well 
known  here,  stands  high  in  reputation  for  talents,  and  enjoys  universal 
confidence  as  a  man  of  honor  and  probity.  And,  if  a  candidate,  such  is 
his  popularity  at  home,  that  I  suppose  he  would  be  elected  by  general 
consent. 

"  Then,  the  objection  arises,  which  you  mention,  from  the  difficulty  of 
finding  a  successor  to  him  in  his  present  office.1  This  objection  is  serious, 
and  they  who  are  on  the  spot  can  best  judge  whether  it  be  insurmount 
able.  I  have  heard  nobody  much  talked  of  for  Governor,  in  case  Mr.  Davis 
should  be  Senator,  but  Mr.  E.  Everett.  It  has  been  thought  his  nomina 
tion  would  bring  back  a  great  portion  of  the  Antimasons  to  a  union  with 
the  Whigs.  Certainly,  that  is  a  very  important  object.  We  need  our 
whole  strength  in  Massachusetts,  and  a  cordial  cooperation  of  the  Anti- 
masons  in  Massachusetts,  in  other  things,  would  have  greatly  beneficial 
effects  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania. 

"  I  have  no  question  that  Mr.  Everett  would  make  a  perfectly  safe 
Governor.  He  has  been  here  ten  years,  and  no  man  has  acted  with 
more  faithfulness  toward  friends,  or  more  devotion  to  the  good  cause. 
I  should  entirely  confide  in  his  integrity  and  ability  in  the  govern 
ment  of  the  State.  He  has  good  principles,  good  feelings,  good  as 
sociations,  and  is  no  more  likely  to  appoint  a  bad  judge,  for  instance, 
or  do  any  other  thing  leading  to  great  public  mischief,  than  Governor 
Davis  himself. 

"  How  extensively  Mr.  Everett  may  be  thought  of,  I  do  not  know.  He 
is  mentioned  frequently  here,  in  case  Governor  Davis  should  come  to  the 
Senate ;  and  I  have  seen  letters  from  home  which  suggest  the  same  thing. 
If  practicable,  a  pacification  of  the  antimasonic  question  is,  doubtless, 
highly  desirable. 

"  I  send  you  Mr.  Clay's  report.  The  committee  of  the  House  will  not 
report  at  present ;  and  nothing  will  be  done  here  till  we  hear  further  from 
France. 

"  We  are  almost  frozen  up  here.  The  weather  is  cold  and  the  snow 
deep,  quite  beyond  all  my  experience. 

"  Yours  with  great  truth  and  sincerity, 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

"  Hon.  Mr.  Mason." 

1  Governor  of  the  State. 


506  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXI. 

[TO  MB.   MASON.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  22, 1835. 

"  DEAR  SIB  :  I  have  received  yours  of  the  14th.  There  has  been  some 
impatience  here,  in  regard  to  proceedings  in  Boston,  on  account  of  the  daily 
inquiries  by  friends  in  other  quarters,  as  to  what  might  be  expected ;  but 
I  presume  things  have  gone  on  as  fast  as  they  well  could. 

"  Mr.  McLean's  nomination  appears  to  take  but  little.  It  is  coldly  re 
ceived  even  in  Ohio ;  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  General  Harrison's  friends 
are  holding  meetings  in  that  State,  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  Mm  for 
ward.  Letters  received  to-day,  from  Columbus  and  Cincinnati,  ask  ur 
gently  what  is  doing  or  to  be  done  in  Massachusetts. 

"  The  schism  in  the  Jackson  party  proceeds.  It  appears  to  me  that 
nothing  is  likely  to  stop  its  progress.  If  we  Whigs  had  union  and  energy, 
we  have  now  before  us  a  prospect  no  way  discouraging. 

"  You  will  have  heard  of  a  duel  to-day  between  Mr.  Wise,  of  Virginia, 
and  his  predecessor,  Mr.  Coke.  I  hear  the  former  is  badly  wounded.  I 
am  busy  in  the  court.  Mr.  Taney  is  yet  before  us.  Probably  will  not  be 
confirmed ;  but  that  is  not  certain.1 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"Mr.  Mason." 

[TO  MR.  MASON.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  February  6, 1835. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR  :  It  is  true  that  I  have  looked  forward  to  the  events 
which  the  approaching  election  might  bring  about  as  likely  to  furnish  a  fit 
occasion  for  my  retirement  from  the  Senate.  I  have  fixed  on  no  particular 
time,  nor  made,  indeed,  any  such  determination  as  may  not  be  changed  by 
the  advice  or  wishes  of  friends.  As  I  am  now  placed,  I  shall  certainly  not 
leave  my  place  till  the  time  arrives  when  I  may  think  that  its  relinquish- 
ment  will  not  be  unsatisfactory  to  Massachusetts. 

"  I  do  not  affect,  my  dear  sir,  to  desire  to  retire  from  public  life,  and  to 
resume  my  profession.  My  habits,  I  must  confess,  and  the  nature  of  my 
pursuits  for  some  years,  render  it  more  agreeable  to  me  to  attend  to  politi 
cal  than  to  professional  subjects.  But  I  have  not  lost  all  relish  for  the 
bar,  and  can  still  make  something  by  the  practice ;  and,  by  remaining  in 
the  Senate,  I  am  making  sacrifices  which  my  circumstances  do  not  justify. 
My  residence  here  so  many  months  every  year  greatly  increases  my  ex 
penses,  and  greatly  reduces  my  income.  You  know  the  charge  of  living 
here  with  a  family ;  and  I  cannot  leave  my  wife  and  daughter  at  home, 
and  come  here  and  go  into  a  *  mess '  at  ten  dollars  a  week. 

"  I  find  it  inconvenient  to  push  my  practice  in  the  Supreme  Court  while 

1  The  nomination  of  Mr.  Taney,  as  succeed  Chief-Justice  Marshall,  was  at 
Chief  Justice  of  the  United  States,  to  this  time  before  the  Senate. 


1835.]  GENERAL  POPULARITY.  507 

a  member  of  the  Senate ;  and  am  inclined,  under  any  view  of  the  future, 
to  decline  engagements  hereafter  in  that  court,  unless  under  special  cir 
cumstances.  These  are  the  reasons  that  have  led  me  to  liope  for  a  fit  occa 
sion  of  leaving  the  Senate;  when  I  can  quit  with  the  approbation  of 
friends,  I  shall  eagerly  embrace  the  opportunity.  In  the  mean  time,  I 
shall  say  nothing  about  it. 

"  I  ought  this  spring  to  go  to  the  West,  as  far  at  least  as  Kentucky  and 
Indiana.  I  am  fully  persuaded  it  would  be  a  highly  useful  thing.  My 
friends  urge  it  upon  me  incessantly,  and  I  hold  back  from  promising  com 
pliance  with  their  wishes  only  from  an  unwillingness  to  lose  six  weeks  more, 
after  the  session  closes.  On  this  point,  however,  as  nothing  is  decided,  I 
say  nothing  at  present.  There  will  be  no  cause  in  court,  I  think,  to  detain 
me  after  the  3d  of  March. 

"  We  have  nothing  new  here.  A  base  attempt  has  been  made  to  ascribe 
the  madness  of  Lawrence1  to  the  speeches,  etc.,  of  the  Senate.  An  inquisi 
tion,  if  it  may  be  so  called,  has  been  had  upon  Lawrence  by  two  physi 
cians,  who  have  signed  a  report,  and  returned  it  to  the  marshal.  It  proves 
a  clear  case  of  insanity.  The  report  will  not  be  published  so  long  as  its 
publication  can  be  withheld. 

"  We  shall  pass  through  the  Senate  a  pretty  good  bill  for  reorganizing 
the  post-office. 

"  I  saw  lately  a  strange  letter  from  Washington  in  the  Boston  Gazette, 
about  an  express  from  the  New  York  Whigs,  and  a  coldness  between  Mr. 
W.  and  Mr.  Clay.  Both  stories  are  equally  and  entirely  groundless.  There 
has  been  no  express  here  from  New  York.  On  the  contrary,  all  the  Whig- 
papers  of  the  city  (except  Noah's)  will  soon  be  out  (or  we  are  misinformed) 
in  the  direction  you  would  desire. 

"Yours  truly, 

"  IX  WEBSTER. 

"Mr.  Mason." 

The  nomination  contemplated  by  the  "Whigs  of  Massachu 
setts  was  made  in  February.  Mr.  Webster  had  a  strong  body 
of  friends  in  Pennsylvania,  who  desired  him  to  come  among 
them  immediately  after  the  adjournment  of  Congress.  He 
was  in  Harrisburg  on  the  19th  of  March,  where  the  Legis 
lature  was  in  session,  and  received  from  a  committee  of  the 
members  an  invitation  to  a  public  dinner,  which  was  tendered 
as  a  mark  of  respect  for  his  public  services  and  his  character  as 
an  American  statesman.  This  honor  he  felt  obliged  to  decline. 
In  August,  being  at  Bangor,  Maine,  on  a  professional  engage 
ment,  he  accepted  an  invitation  to  a  public  entertainment,  and 
afterward  addressed  an  immense  concourse  of  people  who  had 

1  A  person  who  attempted  to  assassinate  the  President. 


508  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXI. 

come  from  far  and  near  to  see  and  to  hear  him.  In  October 
occurred  the  imposing  ceremony  of  the  presentation  to  him,  by 
his  fellow-citizens  of  Boston,  of  a  massive  silver  vase,  in  the 
presence  of  an  audience  of  four  thousand  persons.1  In  Novem 
ber,  he  received  an  invitation  to  a  public  dinner  from  leading 
citizens  of  Philadelphia,  and  in  December  there  came  another 
from  Baltimore ;  both  of  which  he  declined.  From  Vermont, 
from  New  York,  from  Ohio,  from  Louisiana,  and  from  many 
other  regions  remote  from  New  England,  there  came  letters, 
often  numerously  signed,  expressing  the  hopes  of  the  writers 
that  an  opportunity  might  be  secured  for  electing  him  to  the 
presidency.  This  opportunity  seemed  most  likely  to  be  afforded 
by  the  action  of  the  opposition  in  Pennsylvania.  Public  meet 
ings  were  held  in  the  counties  of  Chester  and  Alleghany,  in 
November,  to  elect  delegates  to  a  State  convention.  In  the 
former,  the  Whigs  and  Antimasons  united,  and  appointed  dele 
gates  in  favor  of  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Webster.  In  the  latter, 
the  meeting  was  chiefly  composed  of  Antimasons,  but  they  in 
structed  the  delegates  to  vote  for  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Web 
ster  in  the  State  Convention.  But  here  the  objectionable  prac 
tice  of  interrogating  public  men,  who  were  supposed  to  be  can 
didates  for  public  position,  came  into  unfortunate  activity. 
Men  of  entire  honesty  of  purpose  and  of  great  respectability, 
ardently  desiring  to  make  Mr.  Webster  President  of  the  United 
States,  could  not  content  themselves  with  the  sufficiency  of  his 
character  as  a  statesman,  with  his  known  sentiments  on  all 
really  important  public  questions  of  the  time,  but  they  thought 
it  necessary  to  press  him  on  the  point  of  Masonry.  They 
wanted  him  to  be  their  candidate,  but  they  wanted  him  to  be 
an  Antimasonic  candidate.  Accordingly,  the  Pennsylvania 
State  Committee  of  this  party,  as  well  as  lesser  organizations 
of  the  same  kind,  addressed  to  him  specific  and  pointed  in 
quiries  as  to  his  opinions  about  secret  societies,  and  what  he 
should  deem  the  duty  of  a  Chief  Magistrate  in  respect  to  ap 
pointments  to  office. 

This  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  greatest  trials  of  this 
peculiar  kind  to  which  Mr.  Webster  was  ever  subjected ;  and, 
in  order  to  show  why  it  was  so,  and  to  exhibit  the  manner  in 

1  This  vase  is  now  deposited  in  the  Public  Library  of  the  city  of  Boston. 


1835.]  ANTIMASONRY.  509 

which  it  was  met,  some  explanation  of  the  state  of  things  in 
Pennsylvania,  at  this  time,  is  here  necessary.  The  Whigs  of 
Pennsylvania  were  acting  with  great  prudence,  for  the  Anti- 
masonic  party  was  large,  excited,  and  jealous.  Without  a  co 
operation  of  these  two  branches  of  the  opposition,  neither  Mr. 
Webster  nor  any  other  man  could  obtain  the  popular  vote  of 
the  State.  Mr.  Webster's  Whig  friends,  therefore,  although 
they  regarded  all  this  excitement  on  the  subject  of  Masonry  as 
eminently  unnecessary,  were  very  willing,  and  indeed  earnest, 
to  have  him  satisfy  the  sentiment  to  any  reasonable  extent. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  had  many  warm  friends  among  the 
Aiitimasons,  whose  private  communications  to  him  revealed  the 
intensity  of  their  desire  to  have  him  made  the  candidate  of  their 
party,  but  who  did  not  perceive  that  they  exacted  from  him  a 
pledge  which  it  would  have  been  unbecoming  in  him  to  give. 
To  gratify  such  a  body  of  men,  on  the  eve  of  a  very  important 
election,  without  sacrificing  his  own  character,  was  certainly  a 
delicate  task.  It  is  not  needful  to  ask  the  judgment  of  my 
readers  as  to  the  success  with  which  Mr.  Webster  could  play 
the  part  of  a  politician ;  but  I  can  give  the  means  of  deter 
mining  his  rank  as  a  statesman  and  a  patriot.  The  conven 
tions,  the  ballots,  the  parties  of  this  and  every  other  period  of 
his  life,  are  among  the  dead  things  of  the  past.  His  character 
remains — one  of  our  great  and  imperishable  treasures,  to  which 
we  may  point  as  a  proof  that  our  institutions  sometimes  pro 
duce  men  who  can  act  with  dignity  and  independence. 

In  the  public  answer  which  he  made  to  the  Antimasons  of 
Pennsylvania,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  he  regarded  secret 
societies,  the  members  of  which  take  upon  themselves  extraor 
dinary  obligations,  and  are  bound  together  by  secret  oaths,  as 
objectionable ;  and  he  commended  highly  the  sentiment  which 
the  Antimasons  had  adopted,  of  "  the  supremacy  of  the  laws."  ' 
But  to  the  inquiry  of  what  he  would  deem  the  duty  of  a  Chief 
Magistrate  in  making  appointments  to  office,  he  made  no  an 
swer.  This  topic  he  reserved  for  a  private  letter  to  one  of  the 
gentlemen  who  had  addressed  him.  Let  it  be  understood  that 
Mr.  Webster  earnestly  desired  to  be  President  of  the  United 
States ;  that  he  wished  to  receive  the  nomination  and  support 

1  For  the  public  letter,  see  his  published  Correspondence,  vol.  ii. 


510  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXI. 

of  his  Antimasonic  friends  in  Pennsylvania ;  and  that  it  would 
have  been  quite  easy  for  him  to  have  caused  it  to  be  be 
lieved,  in  that  particular  region,  that  as  President  he  would 
appoint  none  but  Antimasons  to  office  ;  which  was  in  fact 
what  he  was  desired  to  say. 


[TO  MESSRS.  WALLACE  AND   OTHERS.] 

"  BOSTON,  November  30, 1835. 

"  GENTLEMEN  :  I  have  received  your  letter  of  the  16th  instant.  A  de 
sire  to  know  my  opinions  concerning  any  public  question,  which  proceeds 
from  so  highly  respectable  a  source,  would  at  all  times  command  my  re 
spectful  and  prompt  attention.  Before  the  receipt  of  your  letter,  however, 
a  correspondence  had  taken  place  between  friends  of  yours  in  another  part 
of  Pennsylvania  and  myself,  on  the  same  general  subject.  That  corre 
spondence,  I  presume,  is  to  be  laid  before  the  convention  at  Harrisburg, 
and  may  render  a  particular  answer  to  your  letter  unnecessary.  I  will  ob 
serve,  however,  that  on  the  subject  of  all  secret  societies,  bound  by  secret 
oaths,  I  concur  entirely  with  what  I  suppose  to  be  the  sentiments  of  the 
Antimasons  of  Pennsylvania,  as  I  have  said  on  various  occasions  hereto 
fore  ;  and  there  can  be  no  question  of  the  constitutional  right  of  those,  who 
believe  secret  societies  to  be  either  moral  or  political  evils,  to  seek  to  re 
move  those  evils  by  the  exercise  of  the  elective  franchise,  as  well  as  by 
other  lawful  means.  The  expediency  of  such  exercise  of  the  elective  fran 
chise,  in  a  given  case,  must  be  decided  by  the  electors  according  to  their 
own  sense  of  the  magnitude  of  the  evils  which  they  seek  to  remove,  and  a 
conscientious  regard  to  those  other  great  interests  of  the  community  which 
are  more  or  less  affected  by  every  exercise  of  that  franchise. 

"  I  pray  you,  gentlemen,  to  accept  the  assurance  of  my  personal  regard 
and  cordial  good  wishes. 

"Your  obliged  friend  and  fellow-citizen, 

"DANL.  WEBSTER. 

"  To  Messrs.  J.  Wallace  and  others." 


[TO  w.  w.  IRWIN.J 

"  BOSTON,  November  30, 1835. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  enclose  you  copies  of  a  letter  received  by  me  from 
members  of  your  State  Committee,  and  my  answer. 

"  If  my  letter  to  yourself  and  your  associates  had  not  appeared  to  super 
sede  the  necessity,  I  should  have  found  no  difficulty  in  answering  the  first 
two  questions  proposed  to  me  in  this  letter.  But  I  should  doubt  the  pru 
dence  of  directly  replying  to  the  third ;  because,  in  the  situation  in  which 
I  stand,  that  question  might  appear  to  others  to  be  little  else  than  asking 


1835.]  POLITICAL  MOVEMENTS.  511 

me  whether,  on  the  happening  of  a  certain  event,  I  would  confine  myself 
to  Antimasons  in  nominations  to  office.  Although  the  question,  in  form, 
asks  only  what  I  think  would  be  the  duty  of  a  Chief  Magistrate,  yet,  in 
effect,  it  might  be  thought,  or  represented,  as  a  mere  request  of  a  promise 
from  me.  I  wish,  my  dear  sir,  you  would  take  occasion  to  explain  this 
point,  in  conversation,  with  the  writers  of  the  letter,  and  with  other  friends. 
What  a  Chief  Magistrate  must  do,  and  ought  to  do,  so  far  as  he  is  elected 
on  Antimasonic  principles,  and  in  regard  to  portions  of  the  country  where 
those  principles  prevail,  can  be  no  matter  of  doubt  to  you  or  to  me,  or  to 
any  man  who  reflects,  and  who  means  to  act  with  candor  and  honesty  tow 
ard  those  who  support  him.  I  hope  no  one  hesitates  to  believe  that  I 
am  altogether  incapable  of  disappointing,  in  that  respect,  any  natural  and 
just  expectations  which  friends  may  form.  But  it  does  not  consist  with 
my  sense  of  duty  to  hold  out  promises,  or  any  thing  that  might  be  re 
garded  as  equivalent  to  promises,  particularly  on  the  eve  of  a  great  elec 
tion,  the  results  of  which  are  to  affect  the  highest  interests  of  the  country 
for  years  to  come.  I  authorize  you,  my  dear  sir,  to  make  the  substance  of 
this  letter  known  to  your  friends  and  mine ;  but  it  is  still  to  be  regarded, 
of  course,  as  a  private  and  confidential  letter. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 
"  Wm.  W.  Irwin,  Esq.,  at  Harrisburg,  Pa." 

On  the  16th  of  December  separate  State  conventions  of  the 
Whigs  and  the  Antimasons  assembled  at  Harrisburg.  In  the 
latter,  nearly  all  men  admitted  that  Mr.  "Webster  was  their  first 
choice.  But,  alas  for  these  nominating  bodies,  men  could  not 
act  upon  the  conviction  that  a  statesman  of  preeminent  abilities 
and  character  was  the  fittest — nay,  the  only  fit  person  to  be 
designated  for  the  presidency.  To  use  the  cant  of  these  occa 
sions,  with  which  the  private  letters  of  the  time  are  filled,  they 
"  could  not  carry  him ; "  and  it  appears  that  the  reason  most 
generally  assigned  was  that  he  had  been  a  Federalist.  The 
nomination  was  given  to  General  William  Henry  Harrison,  of 
Ohio,  whose  popularity,  founded  on  the  part  he  had  taken  in 
the  late  war  with  England,  was  supposed  to  be  sufficient  to  en 
counter  the  pretensions  of  Mr.  Yan  Buren.  On  the  following 
day  the  Whig  Convention  adopted  the  nomination  of  General 
Harrison.  A  private  letter,  written  on  the  spot,  expressed  the 
indubitable  fact  that  this  step  only  increased  the  chances  of  Mr. 
Van  Buren's  election. 

But  to  return,    Mr.  Webster  was  in  his  place  in  the  Senate 


512  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXI. 

at  an  early  period  of  the  session  which  began  in  December, 
1834.  It  was  the  commencement  of  the  last  year  of  General 
Jackson's  Administration ;  and  matters  of  great  moment  were 
pending  in  relation  to  our  foreign  as  well  as  our  domestic  rela 
tions.  There  was  no  small  danger  of  a  war  with  France  about 
an  affair  of  money ;  and  the  whole  subject  of  the  custody  and 
regulation  of  the  public  funds  remained  as  it  was  left  at  the  end 
of  the  last  session. 

Earely  have  two  great  nations  incurred  a  more  unnecessary 
danger  of  coming  to  blows  than  did  the  United  States  and 
France  in  the  year  1835.  By  a  convention  concluded  in  1831, 
the  French  Government  had  bound  itself  to  pay  the  Govern 
ment  of  the  United  States  twenty-five  millions  of  francs,  to 
liquidate  certain  claims  of  citizens  of  the  United  States ;  *  and 
on  the  2d  of  February,  1833,  the  first  instalment  of  this  sum 
became  due.  A  bill  of  exchange  was  drawn  by  the  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  on  the  French  Minister  of  Finance  for  the 
amount  of  the  instalment,  and  was  sold  to  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States.  On  its  presentation  at  the  French  Treasury, 
payment  was  refused,  on  the  ground  that  the  Legislative  Cham 
bers  had  made  no  appropriation  to  meet  the  instalment.  The 
bill  was  taken  up  in  Europe  for  the  honor  of  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States,  and  was  returned  to  this  country  protested.  The 
bank  claimed  the  usual  damages  of  the  Government,  as  in  any 
other  case  of  a  protested  bill  which  had  been  sold  by  the  drawer. 
In  his  annual  message  at  the  commencement  of  the  session  of 
Congress  in  December,  1833,  President  Jackson  made  an  official 
communication  on  the  subject,  and  stated  that  he  had  dispatched 
an  envoy  to  the  French  Government  to  attend  to  this  matter, 
in  regard  to  which  he  had  received  assurances  that,  at  the  next 
meeting  of  the  Chambers,  the  subject  would  be  presented  and 
satisfactorily  disposed  of.  The  President  added  that,  if  he 
should  be  disappointed  in  the  hope  that  he  entertained,  the  sub 
ject  would  again  be  brought  to  the  notice  of  Congress,  "  in  such 
a  manner  as  the  occasion  may  require." 

Perhaps  it  would  have  been  well  to  have  confined  this  affair, 
at  first,  to  diplomatic  action ;  since,  in  its  attitude  at  that  time, 

1  These  claims  were  for  spoliations     1817.  The  French  spoliations  before  1800 
committed  on  our  commerce  from  1800  to    were  not  embraced  in  this  convention. 


1835.]  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  FRANCE.  513 

there  was  nothing  for  Congress  to  do  in  regard  to  it,  and  the 
course  of  the  French  Government  might  be  susceptible  of  satis 
factory  explanation. 

The  Government  of  King  Louis  Philippe  was  at  this  time 
hampered  by  a  truculent  and  turbulent  opposition.  That  op 
position  contrived  to  make  the  treaty  unpopular.  When  the 
President's  message  of  December,  1833,  was  received  in  Paris, 
there  was  a  general  outcry  against  the  execution  of  the  treaty 
under  what  seemed  a  menace.  Although  the  subject  was  several 
times  brought  before  the  Chambers,  it  was  not  until  the  month 
of  April,  1834,  that  a  vote  upon  it  was  obtained,  and  then  the 
appropriation  necessary  to  carry  the  treaty  into  effect  was  re 
fused.1  The  ministry  then  dispatched  a  national  vessel  to  this 
country,  bearing  the  assurances  of  the  King  that,  as  soon  after 
the  election  of  new  members  as  the  charter  would  permit,  the 
Chambers  should  be  called  together,  and  that  the  whole  influ 
ence  of  the  Executive  Government  should  be  exerted  to  procure 
the  necessary  appropriation,  in  season  to  be  communicated  to 
our  Government  before  the  assembling  of  the  present  Congress. 
The  new  Chambers  met  on  the  31st  of  July,  but  the  subject  was 
not  acted  upon,  and  they  were  prorogued  to  the  29th  of  De 
cember.  New  assurances  were  given  to  the  President  by  the 
King's  Government  that,  at  the  ensuing  session,  the  appropria 
tion  should  be  pressed. 

This  was  the  situation  of  the  affair  when  President  Jackson 
made  his  annual  message  of  December,  1834.  He  laid  before 
Congress  the  entire  history  of  the  negotiation,  commented  with 
a  good  deal  of  severity  on  the  conduct  of  all  branches  of  the 
French  Government,  and  recommended  that  a  law  be  passed 
authorizing  reprisals  upon  French  property,  in  case  provision 
should  not  be  made  for  the  payment  of  this  debt  at  the  ap 
proaching  session  of  the  French  Chambers.  This  message  was 
received,  in  Paris  early  in  January  (1835).  It  was  there,  of 
course,  regarded  as  a  threat.  The  French  minister  at  "Wash 
ington  was  recalled,  and,  on  the  13th  of  January,  Mr.  Livings 
ton,  our  minister  at  Paris,  was  informed  that  his  passports  were- 
at  his  disposal.  At  the  same  time,  the  French  ministry  intro- 

1  The  Due  de  Broglie,  who  was  then  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  immediately- 
resigned. 

34 


514  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXI. 

duced  into  the  Chambers  a  bill  for  the  necessary  appropriation. 
"What  ensued  can  be  best  described  by  quoting  the  following 
private  letter,  addressed  to  Mr.  "Webster  from  Paris,  by  one  of 
his  personal  friends  and  constituents,  the  Hon.  Thomas  H.  Per 
kins,  of  Boston : 

[FROM  THE  HON.  THOS.  H.  PERKINS.] 

"PARIS,  4p/tf  21, 1835. 

"  Hon.  DANIEL  WEBSTER  : 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  been  here  some  days,  and  shall  leave  to-rnorrow 
for  Italy,  to  return  to  England  in  September,  and  hope  to  see  you  before 
you  go  South.  Our  question  was  brought  before  the  Chambers  on  the  9th 
or  10th,  and,  until  the  last  day  of  the  discussion,  it  was  doubtful  how  the 
question  would  go.  It  was  passed  on  Saturday,  with  an  amendment  that 
I  presume  will  defeat  the  payment  of  the  stipulated  sum,  as  it  is  not  prob 
able  that  the  President  will  make  an  apology  for  the  words  used  toward 
France.  There  is  a  great  sensation  among  the  people  in  general  against 
America,  as  they  believe  every  thing  that  has  been  asserted  by  the  opposi 
tion,  who  have  handled  us  *  without  mittens.'  The  opposition  consider  the 
amendment  as  the  success  of  their  efforts.  Has  France  a  right  to  demand 
of  the  Executive  the  amende  honorable  for  words  addressed  to  the  American 
people?  I  should  think  not.  At  any  rate,  they  have  paid  us  well  in 
words,  as  there  has  been  nothing  left  unsaid  that  could  dishonor  the  coun 
try.  They  say  we  are  not  in  a  situation  to  go  to  war ;  that  we  are  too 
avaricious  to  abstain  from  intercourse  with  them ;  and  that  we  shall,  be 
glad  to  accept  the  amendment,  which  I  hope  will  not  be  the  case.  My 
own  opinion  is,  that  many  of  the  opposition  would  be  glad  of  a  war. 
There  are,  I  am  told,  thirty  general  officers  in  the  Chambers,  and  many 
naval  men.  The  only  thing  that  would  bring  them  to  accede  to  the  pay 
ment,  without  conditions,  would  be  a  non-intercourse  act,  and  making  the 
manufactures  or  products  of  France  liable  to  confiscation,  if  attempted  to 
be  introduced,  after  a  given  time,  and  that  should  be  no  longer  than  to 
enable  goods  already  ordered  to  get  home.  A  great  part  of  this  Chamber, 
and,  indeed,  of  France  out  of  the  manufacturing  towns,  are  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  the  United  States  take  more  than  one-third  of  all  they  export 
to  all  countries.  Non-intercourse  would  drive  the  manufactures  of  Lyons, 
Rouen,. etc.,  into  Switzerland  and  Germany,  and  create  great  distress  in 
France  generally.  What  the  course  of  Mr.  Livingston  will  be,  I  do  not 
know.  It  is  said  he  will  go  home  in  the  Constitution,  now  in  the  Channel. 
I  have  not  seen  him  since  the  action  of  the  Chambers.  Our  latest  dates 
are  to  the  16th  from  America.  If  there  is  no  extra  session,  you  will  know 
all  before  you  are  called  upon  to  act. 

"  Ministers  have  doubtless  acted  in  good  faith  toward  us  in  this 
matter,  and  I  have  no  doubt  the  King  would  rather  the  bill  had  passed 


1835.] 


DANGER  OF  WAR  WITH  FRANCE. 


515 


without  any  condition,  but  they  were  afraid  to  act  upon  the  bill  with 
out  accepting  the  amendment. 

"  Your  friend  and  servant, 

"  T.  H.  PEKKINS." 

Before  these  occurrences  could  be  known  in  this  country — 
indeed,  as  soon  as  the  President's  message  of  December  was 
communicated  to  Congress — the  Senate's  Committee  on  Foreign 
Affairs,  of  which  Mr.  Clay  was  chairman,  determined  that  it 
would  be  inexpedient  and  improper  to  adopt  the  President's 
recommendation ;  and,  on  the  14th  of  January,  the  Senate,  by 
a  decisive  vote,  sanctioned  the  determination  of  their  committee. 
The  course  of  Mr.  Webster,  on  this  occasion,  is  sufficiently  ex 
plained  by  the  following  letter,  written  by  him  in  February : 


[TO  MB.  WILLIAM  SULLIVAN.1] 

"  WASHINGTON,  February  23, 1835. 

"  DEAR  SIR :  .  .  .  There  are  three  parties  in  Congress  on  this  question : 
the  Jackson  party  proper,  which,  like  its  chief,  feels  very  warlike ;  the 


1  This  gentleman  had  written  to  Mr. 
Webster,  on  the  21st  of  February,  as  fol 
lows  : 

"  Yon  know  by  the  papers  that  went  last 
night  (if  in  no  other  way)  that  a  Senator  is 
chosen.  You  know  probably,  to-day,  that  the 
ministers  are  recalled.  I  am  reminded  of  a 
country  milliner  who  was  called  to  a  duchess ; 
to  prepare  herself  for  the  interview,  she  in 
quired  what  she  must  say,  and  was  answered, 
'Your  Grace.'  Wherefore,  on  coming  into 
the  presence,  she  courtesied,  and  said:  '  God 
bless  us,  and  what  is  provided  for  us  ! '  .  .  . 
There  is  here  to-day  much  of  that  sort  of  feel 
ing  which  one  may  suppose  to  exist  among 
persons  who  dwell  around  the  base  of  Vesu 
vius  or  ^Etna,  when  the  black  smoke  begins 
to  ascend,  and  sparks  to  fly.  Our  Executive 
has  no  metre,  to  announce  what  is  to  come 
next,  anymore  than  a  burning  mountain  has, 
to  disclose  when  the  lava  will  run,  in  what 
course,  or  in  what  quantity.  Deplorable  as  a 
war  with  France  would  be  in  the  present  con 
dition  of  the  world,  it  is  much  more  to  be 
dreaded  from  its  effects  on  our  own  institu 
tions.  In  the  feverish  state  of  the  slavehold- 
ing  South,  what  will  its  duties  and  interests 
seem  to  itself  to  be  ?  What  is  to  be  the  char 
acter,  and  the  will,  of  the  military  power  to 
be  embodied  in  this  country,  and  by  whom  is 
its  physical  force  to  be  directed,  and  to  what 
objects  ?  How  entirely  uncalled  for  is  all  this 
combination  of  probable  evils  I  You  stand 
acquitted  of  all  responsibility,  eminently.  If 
your  speech  at  Worcester,  in  October,  1832, 
could  have  found  its  way  to  the  understand 
ing  of  the  country,  things  would  not  have 
been  as  they  are.  Is  there  not  some  reason 
to  fear  that  restive,  unquiet  France,  and  per 
plexed  England,  and  vindictive  Spain,  may 


think  a  good  opportunity  has  arisen  to  dis- 

Ce  of  that  '  food  for  gunpowder '  which  a 
g  peace  necessarily  prepares  in  Europe, 
andT  which  must  be  sent  abroad,  to  prevent 
mischief  at  home.  Then,  in  what  condition 
is  this  country  for  a  violent  or  protracted 
struggle,  even  if  another  class  of  rulers  had 
the  power.  This  you  know  better  than  any 
body,  but  every  thinking  man  in  Massachu 
setts  knows  that  this  State  was  never  in  a 
worse  condition  to  meet  such  a  crisis.  The 
pulpit,  peace  societies— a  sickly  sort  of  phi 
lanthropy—a  bad  militia  system,  mischiev 
ously  perverted,  have  combined  to  extinguish 
the  noble  spirit  of  independence,  and  to  palsy 
the  power  of  self-defence,  which  once  gave 
Massachusetts  a  proud  preeminence.  Add  to 
this  (as  I  know  from  what  I  saw  in  the  long 
session  of  the  nominating  committee  at  Wor 
cester,  October,  1833),  there  is  not  a  man  in 
the  State  on  whom  one-quarter  of  the  quali 
fied  voters  would  combine,  and  to  whom  they 
would  give  the  direction  of  its  affairs.  I  re 
member  to  have  heard  you  say,  on  one  occa 
sion,  '  Providence  may  be  better  to  us  than 
our  fears ; '  and,  if  not,  I  must  again  gay, 
with  the  milliner, '  God  bless  us,  and  what  is 
provided  for  us.'  .  .  . 

"  I  was  interrupted  here  by  an  old  gentle 
man  named  Goodhue,  who  is  one  of  your  ad 
mirers,  and  to  whom  (he  says)  you  once  gave 
four  or  five  books.  He  has  closed  a  some 
what  long,  profitless,  and  tedious  discourse, 
with  a  phrase  which  I  think  I  may  well  use 
to  close  a  letter  to  which,  perhaps,  you  may 
give  a  like  character:  'I  hope  you  will  not 
impute  any  thing  that  I  have  said  to  any  thing 
worse  than  weakness.' 

"  Your  respectful  friend, 

"WM.  SULLIVAN. 

"Hon.  Mr.  Webster." 


516  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXI. 

Southern  anti-Jackson  men,  who  seem  to  me  to  be  in  the  other  extreme — 
witness  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr.  Poindexter,  who  speak  of  the  whole  matter 
only  as  a  debt,  and  recommend  an  action  of  assumpsit,  instead  of  war,  etc. ; 
and  then  there  is  the  rest  of  us,  who  desire  to  say  and  do  nothing  to  en 
courage  France  in  her  neglect  of  our  rights,  and  who  are  not  willing, 
nevertheless,  to  hazard  the  peace  of  the  country  without  absolute  necessity. 
"We  wish  to  show  to  France  that  there  is  but  one  sentiment  in  the  United 
States  as  to  the  justice  of  our  side  of  the  question ;  one  sentiment  as  to 
the  propriety  of  insisting  on  the  fulfilment  of  the  treaty,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  a  great  reluctance  to  come  to  an  open  rupture,  and,  in  order  to  avoid 
that,  a  disposition  to  give  France  full  time  to  consider  well  of  her  course." 

Two  days  before  this  letter  was  written,  lie  had  occasion  to 
interpose  in  a  somewhat  earnest  discussion  which  sprang  up  on 
the  presentation  of  one  of  the  memorials  on  the  subject,  and 
which  he  thus  quieted : 

"  Mr.  Webster  said  he  was  surprised  that  such  a  debate  should  arise  on 
a  motion  to  print  a  memorial,  considering  the  importance  and  delicacy  of 
the  question,  and  the  state  of  the  information  before  the  Senate.  He  was 
not  in  his  place,  not  having  come  from  the  committee-room,  when  his  col 
league  presented  the  paper,  but  he  found,  from  remarks  of  gentlemen  since 
he  had  taken  his  seat,  that  the  occasion  had  been  taken  to  express  strong 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  our  relations  with  France.  He  hoped,  most  sin 
cerely,  the  discussion  would  not  be  pursued  at  present.  If  it  were,  he 
should  be  quite  obliged  to  express  his  own  sentiments,  because  he  was 
bound  to  say  that  they  differed  from  the  sentiments  which  had  already 
been  uttered  by  those  for  whom  he  entertained  much  respect.  He  could 
not  consider  the  question  between  us  and  France  a  mere  question  about  a 
debt — a  controversy  only  about  so  much  money.  He  thought,  certainly, 
that  the  question  was  of  a  much  graver  and  higher  character.  He  was 
anxious,  most  anxious,  to  preserve  the  peace  of  the  country,  without  sacri 
ficing,  at  the  same  time,  its  honor  and  dignity.  He  still  hoped  that  these 
objects  were  not  incompatible ;  he  still  trusted  that  peace  might  be  main 
tained,  without  discredit  or  reproach,  and  without  sacrificing  any  right,  or 
any  interest  of  this  country,  or  any  of  its  citizens.  That,  however,  de 
pended  much  on  the  course  adopted  by  others.  But,  at  present,  the  Senate 
was  in  no  condition  to  discuss  or  consider  this  high  subject.  No  official 
communication  was  before  them.  All  they  had  was  a  paragraph  from  a 
French  newspaper.  It  seemed  to  him,  in  all  points  of  view,  to  be  much 
wiser  to  wait  till  official  communications  shall  be  received,  in  the  usual  and 
regular  way.  He  earnestly  hoped  the  discussion  would  not  proceed." 

But  this  affair  connected  itself  with  another  measure,  in  re 
gard  to  which  Mr.  "Webster  felt  it  to  be  his  duty  to  take  a  very 


1835.]  LOSS  OF  THE  FORTIFICATION  BILL.  517 

decided  stand.  On  the  last  night  of  the  session  (March  3d), 
the  annual  appropriation  bills  being  under  consideration  in  the 
Senate,  a  message  was  received  from  the  House  of  Representa 
tives,  proposing  to  amend  one  of  the  Senate's  amendments  to 
the  Fortification  Bill  by  adding  the  following  section  : 

"  That  the  sum  of  three  millions  of  dollars  be,  and  the  same  is  hereby, 
appropriated,  out  of  any  money  in  the  Treasury  not  otherwise  appropriated, 
to  be  expended,  in  whole  or  in  part,  under  the  direction  of  the  President 
of  the  United  States,  for  the  military  and  naval  service,  including  fortifi 
cations  and  ordnance  and  increase  of  the  navy :  provided  such  expendi 
tures  shall  be  rendered  necessary  for  the  defence  of  the  country  prior  to 
the  next  meeting  of  Congress." 

This  proposition,  which  led  to  the  loss  of  the  whole  Fortifi 
cation  Bill,  was  instantly  opposed  by  Mr.  "Webster,  upon  the 
two  plain  grounds,  that  it  had  not  been  recommended  or  asked 
for  by  the  Executive,  and  that  the  proposed  grant  specified  no 
objects  to  which  the  money  was  to  be  applied.  He  rested  both 
of  the  objections  upon  provisions  of  the  Constitution.  He 
spoke  with  great  earnestness  and  animation.  The  result  was, 
that  the  Senate  rejected  the  amendment.  The  House  then  sent 
another  message,  insisting  on  its  amendment,  and  the  Senate, 
on  Mr.  "Webster's  motion,  adhered  to  its  refusal.  The  entire 
Fortification  Bill  failed  to  become  a  law,  in  consequence  of  the 
neglect  of  the  House  to  act  on  the  report  of  a  committee 
of  conference,  through  which  Mr.  Webster  proposed  to  make 
specific  appropriations  for  arming  the  fortifications,  and  repair 
ing  and  equipping  the  ships-of-war.1 

1  Mr.  Webster,  from  the  committee  of  of  Mr.  Webster,  the  Senate  adopted  the 
conference,  reported  that  the  two  com-  following  resolution : 
mittees  had  agreed,  in  lieu  of  the  amend-         «  Kesolved,  That  a  message  be  sent  to  the 
ment  of  the  House,  to  recommend  the  honorable  the  House  of  Representatives,  re- 
adoption    of   the    following    appropria-  spectfully  to  remind  the  House  of  the  report 

of  the  committee  of  conference  on  the  disa 
greeing  votes  of  the   two   Houses   on  the 

"  As  an  additional  appropriation  for  arm-  amendment  of  the  House  to  the  amendment 

ing  the  fortifications  of  the  United  States,  of  the  Senate  to  the  bill  respecting  the  forti- 

three  hundred  thousand  dollars.  fications  of  the  United  States." 

"As  an  additional  appropriation  for  the  mi,     o  ^          n-±nA  ot;n  „          A 
repairs  and  equipment  of  the  ships-of-war          The  Senate  then  waited  still  a  good 
of  the  United  States,  five  hundred  thousand  while  longer,  and,  not  hearing,  sent  still 
dollars."  another  message,  informing  the  House 
The  House  having  possession  of  the  that  they,  the  Senate,  had  no  further 
bill  and  papers,  the  Senate  could  not  act  business  before  them.     No  answer  corn- 
on  the  report  until  it  heard  from  the  ing  to  this  message,  the  Senate,  after  wait- 
other  House.  ing  a  considerable  time  longer,  and  hearing 
After  waiting  some  time,  on  motion  nothing  from  the  bill,  adjourned  sine  die. 


518  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXI. 

From  these  statements,  the  reader  will  understand  the  atti 
tude  of  the  French  question,  and  the  position  which  the  Senate 
occupied  in  relation  to  military  preparations,  at  the  close  of  the 
session  in  March,  1835.  Mr.  "Webster's  personal  relations  to 
these  subjects  will  be  resumed  in  the  next  chapter. 

At  this  session  he  brought  before  Congress  the  subject  of 
French  spoliations  on  American  commerce,  committed  before 
the  year  1800.  This  was  a  judicial  question  between  citi 
zens  of  the  United  States  and  their  own  Government ;  for  these 
claims  on  the  Government  of  France  had  been  released  on 
the  part  of  the  United  States  in  the  convention  of  1800,  by 
a  mutual  renunciation  of  all  adverse  claims  between  the  two 
countries,  which  left  the  American  sufferers  in  the  position  of 
parties  whose  right  to  demand  indemnity  from  France  had 
been,  for  public  and  national  reasons,  cut  off  by  their  own  Gov 
ernment.  The  whole  subject  was  fully  examined  by  Mr.  Web 
ster  in  a  speech  which  he  delivered  on  the  12th  of  January 
(1835),  and  which  is  printed  in  the  fourth  volume  of  his  Works. 
Before  its  delivery,  he  was  charged,  in  a  letter  written  from 
Washington  to  a  newspaper  in  Albany,  with  having  a  direct 
personal  interest  in  these  claims,  as  counsel  employed  upon  a 
contingent  compensation.  He  caused  a  friend  in  Albany  to 
demand  of  the  editor  the  name  of  the  writer ;  but  no  infor 
mation  could  be  obtained  beyond  the  fact  that  the  letter  was 
written  by  a  member  of  Congress.  When  he  rose  to  speak 
upon  the  subject,  he  took  occasion  to  say  that  he  had  never 
been  retained,  or  even  spoken  to,  as  counsel,  in  the  course  of 
his  life,  in  relation  to  these  claims.  He  was  placed  by  the  Sen 
ate  at  the  head  of  the  committee  on  this  subject,  at  the  last  ses 
sion,  without  his  own  wish  and  without  his  own  knowledge. 

At  this  session,  also,  he  made  a  very  important  speech  on 
the  President's  power  to  appoint  and  remove  public  officers, 
upon  a  bill  that  was  intended  to  reduce  the  influence  exerted 
by  the  Executive  through  the  public  patronage.  In  this  speech 
he  took  occasion  to  express  fully  his  views  of  the  construction 
given  to  the  Constitution  in  1789,  by  which  Congress  had  then 
decided  that  the  power  of  removal  belongs  to  the  President  as 
the  Executive.  It  has  already  been  said  that,  as  an  original 
proposition,  Mr.  Webster  did  not  concur  in  this  construction. 


1835.]  THE  EXPUNGING  RESOLUTION.  519 

He  now  placed  upon  record  the  grounds  of  his  dissent  from  it. 
So  far  as  the  decision  of  1789  implied  a  power  of  removal  in 
the  President  separate  from  the  action  of  the  whole  appointing 
power,  which  consists  of  the  President  and  the  Senate,  he  held 
that  the  decision  was  wrong ;  that  Congress  possesses  the  power 
to  regulate  the  tenure  of  all  offices  the  tenure  of  which  is  not 
fixed  by  the  Constitution ;  and  that  it  is  competent  for  Con 
gress  to  provide,  as  a  regulation  of  that  tenure,  that  the  incum 
bent  shall  be  removed  only  on  reasons  to  be  stated  by  the  Presi 
dent  to  the  Senate,  and  to  be  acted  upon  by  both.1  But,  while 
he  held  that  it  is  in  the  power  of  Congress  to  reverse  the  de 
cision  of  1789,  which  so  construed  the  Constitution  as  to 
separate  the  power  of  removal  from  the  power  of  appointment, 
he  did  not  deny  that  under  that  construction  the  President 
possesses  such  a  separate  power,  or  propose  to  take  it  away.  The 
bill  which  he  now  advocated,  and  which  he  considered  sufficient 
to  check  the  abuses  of  the  power,  required  that  when  a  nomi 
nation  should  be  made  by  the  President  to  the  Senate,  to  fill  a 
vacancy  in  an  office  caused  by  the  President's  having  removed 
the  former  incumbent,  the  fact  of  the  removal  should  be  stated 
to  the  Senate  at  the  same  time  when  the  new  nomination  is 
made,  with  a  statement  also  of  the  reasons  for  making  the 
removal. 

On  the  18th  of  February,  Mr.  Benton  introduced  a  resolu 
tion  to  expunge  from  the  Journals  of  the  Senate  its  resolution 
of  March  28,  1834,  concerning  the  President's  assumption  of 
powers  over  the  public  revenue.  On  the  last  day  of  the  session, 
the  Senate,  by  a  vote  of  thirty-nine  to  seven,  struck  out  of  Mr. 
Benton's  resolution  the  words,  "  ordered  to  be  expunged  from 
the  Journals."  Mr.  Webster  immediately  rose  and  said  that 
this  great  vote  had  accomplished  all  that  he  had  ever  desired 
respecting  this  expunging  resolution.  Thereafter,  propositions 
to  pass  resolutions  inconsistent  with  that  originally  adopted  on 
this  subject  must  be  met  when  they  should  arise.  But  the 
offensive  and  illegal  act  of  tampering  with  the  Journal  of  the 
Senate  had  now  been  most  happily  defeated  by  a  nearly  unani 
mous  vote.  He  concluded  with  a  motion,  "  which,"  he  said, 

1  The    speech    is   contained  in  the     Compare  Madison's  Works,  iv.,  342,  343, 
fourth  volume   of  his  Works,   179-199.     368,  385. 


520  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXI. 

"  I  forewarn  friends  and  foes  that  I  shall  not  withdraw  " — that 
Mr.  Benton's  resolution  be  laid  upon  the  table.  This  was  car 
ried  by  a  vote  of  twenty-seven  to  twenty. 

The  occurrences  of  the  last  session  had  convinced  Mr.  "Web 
ster  that  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  could  not  be  rechar- 
tered ;  that  the  experiment  of  making  use  of  the  State  banks 
as  fiscal  agents  of  the  Government  must  go  on ;  and  that,  the 
day  of  argument  being  now  passed,  the  new  system  must  await 
the  unerring  result  of  experience.  A  bill  to  regulate  the  de 
posits  of  the  public  money  being  before  the  Senate,  he  took 
occasion  to  say  that  sooner  or  later  the  time  must  come  when 
the  country  would  feel  the  fullest  conviction  of  the  necessity  for 
a  national  bank.  But  he  did  not  purpose  to  propose  another, 
until  public  opinion  had  demanded  it.  At  present  the  ability 
of  the  State  banks  to  furnish  a  circulating  medium,  or  a  safe 
system  of  exchanges  capable  of  taking  the  place  of  those  of  the 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  could  not  be  tested,  for  the  whole 
circulation  of  that  bank  was  still  employed  in  assisting  the 
operations  of  the  Treasury,  facilitating  exchanges,  and  enabling 
the  deposit  banks  themselves  to  make  use  of  a  medium  of  uni 
versal  credits.  "When  the  time  should  arrive  for  the  substitu 
tion  of  the  notes  of  the  deposit  banks  in  the  place  of  the  twenty 
millions  of  universally  accredited  paper  of  the  national  institu 
tion,  the  "  experiment "  of  the  Administration  could  be  put 
upon  its  trial.  "What  was  likely  to  happen,  however,  was  al 
ready  foreshadowed.  Treasury  warrants  drawn  on  the  deposit 
banks  had  already  begun,  in  a  few  cases,  to  be  paid  in  current 
~bank  notes,  which  could  not  have  the  same  value  in  all  parts  of 
the  Union.  To  stop  this  on  the  threshold,  he  proposed  and 
carried  a  provision  making  it  illegal,  and  requiring  the  Treasury 
drafts  on  the  deposit  banks  to  be  paid  in  gold  and  silver,  if  the 
holder  should  demand  it.1 

1  February  26, 1835.   Works,  iv.,  200. 


1835.]  INDEPENDENCE  OF  TEXAS.  521 


GHAPTEE   XXII. 
1835-1836. 

THE   INDEPENDENCE    OF  TEXAS    ACHIEVED — MR.  WEBSTER'S   DESIRE 

TO   HAVE   HER  REMAIN  A  NATION  BY  HERSELF EARLY   SPIRIT 

OF    THE  ANTISLAVERY    MOVEMENT OPINIONS   OF  MR.   WEBSTER 

ON    THE  WHOLE    SUBJECT    OF    SLAVERY — TREATMENT    OF    THE 
PETITIONS   FOR  ITS   ABOLITION  IN  THE  DISTRICT  OF  COLUMBIA — 

"  INCENDIARY    PUBLICATIONS  " ACKNOWLEDGMENT    OF    TEXAN 

INDEPENDENCE LOSS     OF     THE    FORTIFICATION     BILL     AT     THE 

PREVIOUS     SESSION MR.     WEBSTER'S     DEFENCE     OF     HIS     OWN 

COURSE AN  UNPUBLISHED     SPEECH CUSTODY    OF  THE   PUBLIC 

FUNDS REGULATION     OF     THE     DEPOSIT    BANKS DISTRIBUTION 

OF     SURPLUS     REVENUES SETTLEMENT     OF     THE     DIFFICULTY 

WITH   FRANCE — PRESIDENTIAL   ELECTION   OF  1836. 

~\  jT"R.  WEBSTER  is  now  to  be  observed  in  the  position  of  a 
-L-T-L  public  man  formally  proposed  as  a  candidate  for  the 
presidency  of  the  United  States  by  the  State  which  he  repre 
sented  in  the  Senate.  In  what  degree  his  public  conduct  was 
influenced  or  affected  by  this  position  the  reader  can  judge. 
Topics  were  to  come  under  discussion  in  Congress,  in  respect 
to  which  it  was  certainly  in  his  power  to  conciliate  popular  sen 
timent  in  regions  very  far  from  New  England ;  and  there  was 
no  man  in  public  life,  at  that  day,  whose  words  were  carried 
farther,  whose  acts  were  more  closely  observed  by  the  people 
of  the  United  States,  or  whose  sentiments  were  more  likely  to 
be  known,  when  they  were  uttered,  among  both  friends  and  op 
ponents.  In  the  remote  Southwest,  an  excitement  had  already 


522  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

arisen,  which  was  to  test  the  strength  of  his  character  as  a 
statesman,  as  it  had  not  been  tested  or  tried  before. 

The  inhabitants  of  Texas  were  at  this  time  engaged  in  the 
revolutionary  war  with  Mexico,  by  which  they  had  undertaken 
to  establish  their  independence.  The  large  emigration  from 
the  United  States  which  had  for  some  time  been  flowing  into 
Texas,  the  sympathies  which  this  emigration  created  between 
the  people  on  our  southwestern  frontier  and  the  people  of  that 
province,  and  the  prospect  of  its  separation  from  Mexico,  at 
tracted  Mr.  "Webster's  attention  from  the  first,  and  gave  him 
much  anxiety.  This  whole  subject  appeared  to  him  to  be  likely 
to  bring  into  our  politics  new  causes  of  embarrassment,  and  new 
tendencies  to  dismemberment.1  The  opinion,  thus  early  formed, 
was  based  upon  the  consideration  that  the  people  of  Texas, 
after  driving  out  the  Mexican  power,  must  either  be  made  a 
separate  nation,  or  seek  to  become  a  part  of  the  United  States  ; 
that,  however  they  might  succeed  for  a  time  in  maintaining 
the  former  character,  the  emigration  that  had  entered  Texas 
would  make  it  a  slaveholding  country  ;  that  if  it  continued  an 
independent  nation,  it  would  be  one  to  which  our  Southern 
States  would  have  strong  tendencies  whenever  causes  might 
spring  up  that  would  lead  them  to  seek  a  separation  from  the 
Union ;  and  that  if  Texas  sought  to  become  a  part  of  the 
United  States,  its  absorption  into  the  Union  would  occasion 
new  embarrassments,  arising  from  the  addition  of  an  enormous 
territory  to  the  slaveholding  region  of  our  confederacy,  that 
could  not  take  place  and  continue  without  bringing  the  North 
ern  and  Southern  sections  of  our  country,  sooner  or  later,  into 
collision,  on  the  floor  of  Congress,  in  relation  to  the  whole  sub 
ject  of  slavery.  There  were,  therefore,  in  his  view,  from  the 
very  first,  serious  difficulties  to  be  encountered,  springing  from 
the  success  of  the  Texan  Revolution.  The  course  which  he  felt 
it  to  be  his  duty  to  take  was  one  to  be  determined  by  a  balance 
of  all  the  evils  arising  out  of  the  situation.  He  was  very  soon 
convinced  that  the  paramount  interests  of  the  United  States 
would  be  best  secured  by  having  Texas  remain  a  distinct  na- 

1  Letter  to  Mr.  Everett. — ( Correspond-  and  practically  established  the  indepen- 
ence,  ii.,  19.  May  7, 1836.)  The  decisive  dence  of  Texas,  was  fought  on  the  21st 
battle  of  San  Jacinto,  which  secured  of  April,  1836. 


1836.]  INDEPENDENCE  OF  TEXAS.  523 

tion ;  that,  if  she  could  maintain  herself  in  this  character,  we 
should  avoid  the  internal  dissensions  that  would  be  almost  cer 
tain  to  follow  her  incorporation  into  the  Union ;  and  that,  how 
ever  it  might  be  feared  that  her  separate  nationality  would 
create  some  centrifugal  tendencies  in  our  Southern  States  tow 
ard  her,  such  tendencies  could  be  more  easily  encountered  than 
the  sectional  collision  which  would  be  the  sure  consequence  of 
her  addition  to  the  Union.  It  will  be  found,  accordingly,  that 
these  views  were  the  key-note  of  his  whole  policy  on  this  sub 
ject,  and  that,  so  far  as  he  could  exercise  any  influence,  publicly 
or  privately,  upon  events,  that  influence  was  always  exerted  to 
promote  the  separate  nationality  of  Texas,  after  she  had  suc 
ceeded,  by  the  battle  of  San  Jacinto,  in  expelling  the  Mexican 
power  from  her  borders.  Soon  after  that  event,  he  received 
the  following  very  graphic  letter  from  Judge  Catron,  of  Ten 
nessee  : 

[FKOM  JUDGE  CATKON.] 

"NASHVILLE,  \Wi  June,  1836. 

"  MY  DEAK  SIB  :  An  expression  of  yours  in  the  Senate,  when  speaking 
of  the  propriety  of  recognizing  the  independence  of  Texas,  has  made  a 
very  strong  impression  in  this  country  that  England  may  endeavor  to  gain 
a  footing  in  Texas  by  purchase  from  Mexico.1  A  large  meeting  was  holden 
here  yesterday,  which  resolved  that  Congress  and  the  Executive  should 
forthwith,  and  before  the  close  of  the  session,  recognize  the  independence 
of  Texas ;  and  use  the  means  to  end  the  war ;  and  extend  our  boundary 
west,  that  is,  acquire  the  country.  This  is  proposed  in  effect,  though  not  in 
terms. 

"England  will  be  drawn  into  the  Texan  war  in  this  wise :  The  Mexi 
can  is  driven  from  Texas  with  a  terror  upon  him  inconsistent  with  further 
fighting  there.  If  the  matter  would  end  at  this,  it  would  be  well.  But 
the  spirit  is  abroad  through  the  whole  valley  of  the  Mississippi  to  march 
upon  Mexico.  All  may  emigrate  to  Texas  who  will.  It  is  lawful.  All 
who  choose  may  buy  Texas  lands.  This  is  lawful.  The  golden  city  pre 
sents  temptations  strong  as  in  the  days  of  Cortez.  Men  and  money  are  to 
be  had — the  former  in  excess— to  march  upon  it  in  the  fall.  The  Mexican 
population  consists  of,  say  7,000,000—3,000,000  native  Indians  an  encum- 

1  Mr.  "Webster  had  said  in  the  Senate,  European  power  should    ever  be   per- 

on  the  23d  of  May,  that  he  had  received  mitted  to  establish    a    colony  on  .the 

some  information   from    a    respectable  American  Continent.     He  had  no  doubt 

source,  which  turned  his  attention  to  the  that  attempts  would  be  made  by  some 

very  significant  expression  used  by  Mr.  European  government  to  obtain  a  cession 

Monroe  in  his  message  of  1822,  that  no  of  Texas  from  the  Government  of  Mexico, 


524:  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

brance,  the  like  number  of  the  mixed  blood,  worthless,  or  nearly  so,  as  de 
fenders,  and  one  million  of  Spanish  descent  unmixed,  who  are  poor  sol 
diers,  and  divided  at  that  between  the  parties  of  the  priests  and  liberals. 
During  the  whole  of  the  Mexican  civil  war,  hardly  a  battle  was  fought  re 
spectable  as  a  foraging  skirmish  of  a  well-appointed  army  of  respectable 
size.  Mr.  Justin  Chambers  informs  me  (now  here)  that  the  companies  of 
native  Indians,  and  often  of  the  mixed  blood,  are  marched  to  the  seat  of 
war  handcuffed  by  pairs,  with  a  common  chain  extending  through  the 
middle,  and  when  brought  into  battle  put  in  front,  with  orders  to  shoot 
them  in  rear  if  they  give  way  !  That  convicts  always  are  managed  in  this 
wise,  and  were  at  the  taking  of  the  Alamo.  There  is  not  a  boy,  *  whose 
quiver  and  bow  is  scarcely  terror  to  the  crow,'  in  this  great  valley  but 
believes  this,  be  it  strictly  correct  or  not ;  and  hardly  one  that  does  not 
ardently  long  to  be  of  the  army  that  is  to  conquer  the  priests,  and  divide 
the  ill-gotten  gold  of  the  temple — to  get  his  slice  of  the  great  lamp  in  the 
cathedral,  or  a  foot's  length  of  a  silver  pillar,  and  fame  besides.  It  is 
not  supposed  there  will  be  fighting  enough  for  tolerable  sport.  My  belief 
is,  that  this  is  but  too  true ;  but,  whether  true  or  fallacious,  the  effect  must 
be  the  same.  If  the  war  continues,  Texas  will  endeavor  to  conquer  Mexico. 
England  will  aid  the  latter  to  resist ;  will  aid  her  to  invade  Texas  in  turn ; 
and  depend  on  it,  when  she  puts  her  hand  into  this  work,  Mexico  shares 
the  fate  of  India. 

"  Whether  this  be  an  evil-brooding  fancy,  you  are  the  better  judge ;  if 
not,  now  is  the  time  for  us  to  act  as  a  preventive  means.  The  object  of 
this  scrawl  is  to  give  the  state  of  temperament  in  the  West — uncontrollable 
as  the  Mississippi.  It  may  be  of  use. 

"  The  young  fellows  who  fought  in  the  battle  of  San  Jacinto  are  drop 
ping  in  daily,  and  are  followed  by  crowds  of  young  and  old — for  hardly 
any  of  us  have  escaped  the  felicity  of  having  divers  young  kinsmen  there 
of  whom  we  are  most  anxious  to  hear — and  the  first  question  is,  '  How  did 
he  fight  ? '  with  glistening  eyes.  '  Aye,  aye  ! '  says  the  father,  *  I  thought  so.' 
The  boy  may  have  run  away,  as  many  did ;  he  is  now  the  hero  of  the 
family,  and  all  follow  him  who  choose.  No  monk  is  needed  to  preach 
the  crusade.  The  interference  of  yourself  and  Northern  friends  to 
check  it  would,  I  feel  very  sure,  be  a  great  service  to  the  country. 
That  the  recognition  of  Texas,  and  the  ending  of  the  war.  is  the 
proper  course,  all  must  concur,  and  that  another  equal  opportunity, 
after  the  close  of  the  present  session  of  Congress,  to  fix  our  boundary 
west  of  the  Colorado,  will  present,  I  think  no  well-informed  man  will 
believe. 

"  Most  sincerely,  I  have 

"  The  honor  to  be  your 

"  Friend  and  obedient  servant, 

"  J.  CATKON. 

"  To  the  Hon.  D.  Webster, 
Washington." 


1836.]  EARLY  SPIRIT  OF  THE  ABOLITIONISTS.  525 

There  were  reasons  less  observed  at  this  moment  by  the  ex 
cellent  man  who  wrote  this  letter  than  they  were  by  Mr.  "Web 
ster,  which  made  it  inexpedient  for  the  United  States  to  seek 
the  acquisition  of  Texas.  The  agitation  for  the  abolition  of 
slavery  was  recently  begun ;  and  Mr.  Webster  had  means  of 
knowing  in  what  spirit  it  had  been  begun,  by  many  who  had 
embarked  in  it,  as  well  as  the  nature  of  the  feeling  which  it  was 
to  touch  in  the  breasts  of  the  people  of  the  North.  An  official 
letter  from  one  of  the  antislavery  societies  addressed  to  him 
during  the  winter  of  1836,  transmitting  to  him  some  petitions 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  which 
they  wished  him  to  present  to  the  Senate,  now  lies  before  me ; 
and,  as  the  persons  who  subscribed  and  sent  these  petitions  were 
among  his  constituents,  they  had  a  right  to  ask  him  to  present 
them.  It  is  quite  apparent,  however,  from  this  letter,  that  the 
persons  who  caused  it  to  be  written  intended  to  make  no  allow 
ance  for  the  feelings  or  apprehensions  of  the  people  of  the  slave- 
holding  States ;  that  the  "  Abolitionists  "  would,  under  no  cir 
cumstances,  refrain  from  pressing  their  points ;  that,  if  it  should 
be  found  that  Congress  was  unable,  from  any  restrictions  in  the 
cessions  by  Maryland  and  Virginia,  to  abolish  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  they  intended  to  petition  Congress  to  re 
move  the  seat  of  government ;  and  that  they  designed  to  effect 
"  the  speedy  and  entire  abolition  of  slavery,"  by  the  use  of 
"  moral  means."  *  On  all  these  points  the  letter  was  explicit, 
and  it  expressed  the  desire  of  the  Antislavery  Society  that  their 
determinations  might  be  fully  known.  Mr.  "Webster  knew, 
therefore,  that  an  agitation  had  begun,  which  was  to  aim  at  a 
great  organic  change  in  the  domestic  relations  of  States  which 
had  never  committed  this  subject  to  the  control  of  the  General 
G-overnment,  and  that  this  agitation  must  inevitably  make 
itself  felt  in  the  halls  of  Congress.  Already  the  blunder  had 
been  committed  of  calling  in  question  the  right  of  citizens  to 
petition  Congress  on  this  subject.  Already  there  were  mani 
festations  of  a  purpose  to  exclude  from  the  public  mails,  in  the 
slaveholding  States,  printed  matter  in  relation  to  slavery.  Two 
opposite  forces  in  the  opposite  sections  of  the  Union  were  thus 

1  MS.  letter  from   the  corresponding    slavery  Society  to  Mr.  Webster,  January 
secretary  of   the    Massachusetts    Anti-     13,  1836. 


526  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

arraying  themselves  for  that  long  conflict  that  was  finally  to 
shake,  if  not  to  overthrow,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
Let  it  be  remembered,  therefore,  that,  at  the  very  first  moment  of 
the  success  of  the  Texan  Revolution,  Mr.  "Webster  had  fixed  his 
attention  upon  the  dangers  that  would  attend  her  absorption 
into  this  Union ;  and  let  it  also  be  remembered  what  were  the 
contemporaneous  occurrences  and  tendencies  that  made  him  so 
unwilling  to  encounter  that  result.1 

Having  touched  upon  this  topic,  it  is  proper  to  indicate  here 
the  cardinal  principles  on  which  his  course  in  regard  to  it  was 
shaped  from  the  first.  In  the  first  place,  he  held  that  all  the 
guaranties  which  the  Constitution  had  given  to  slavery,  as  a 
domestic  institution  of  States  in  the  Union,  were  to  be  strictly 
and  faithfully  observed ;  and,  while  he  regarded  it  as  a  political, 
social,  and  moral  evil,  he  did  not  allow  that  political  action 
upon  it,  where  it  was  not  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Federal 
Government,  by  citizens  of  non-slaveholding  States,  was  legally 
or  morally  justifiable.  In  the  second  place,  he  maintained  that 
any  enlargement  of  its  area,  by  the  addition  of  new  slavehold- 
ing  States,  was  at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances  a  ques 
tion  that  concerned  the  whole  Union  ;  fit  to  be  acted  upon  by 
Congress,  and  in  his  opinion  never  to  be  consented  to.  In  the 
third  place,  he  considered  the  existence  of  slavery  in  the  Dis 
trict  of  Columbia  as  a  matter  wholly  under  the  control  of  Con 
gress,  to  be  acted  upon  always  with  reference  to  the  effect  of 
such  action  upon  the  harmony  and  stability  of  the  Union.  But 
beneath  all  these  opinions  upon  specific  questions,  lay  his  deep, 
abiding  conviction  that  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
was  so  founded  in  mutual  concessions  between  the  opposing 
interests  and  feelings  of  the  two  grand  sections  of  the  Union, 
that  it  could  not  be  preserved  but  by  acting  under  and  admin 
istering  it  according  to  the  letter  of  its  provisions ;  and  that 
when  either  section  sought  for  additional  advantages,  not  stipu 
lated  for  in  its  formation,  or  when  either  refused  to  abide  by 
any  of  its  compacts,  there  could  be  no  security  for  it  in  the 
future,  and  no  means  of  preventing  the  dismemberment  which 
the  loss  of  its  security  must  entail. 

All  men,  who  are  accustomed  to  consider  the  boundary 

1  See  the  speech  at  Niblo's  Saloon  in  New  York.— (  Works,  i.,  343,  354.) 


1836.]  TREATMENT  OF  PETITIONS.  527 

which  a  statesman  must  regard  as  the  line  that  forbids  him  to 
act  upon  purely  moral  considerations,  will  recognize  in  these 
opinions  the  just  limitations  of  political  conduct.  An  Ameri 
can  statesman,  living  and  acting  in  the  period  of  Mr  .Webster's 
public  life,  might  well  regard  slavery  as  an  evil,  and  a  great  moral 
wrong ;  he  might  even  concur  in  the  favorite  phrase  of  those 
who  assailed  it  as  the  "  sum  of  all  villanies,"  if  he  saw  reason 
so  to  characterize  it.  But  the  question  on  which  posterity  are 
to  judge  Mr.  "Webster — on  which  many  of  his  contemporaries 
were  never  willing  to  judge  him  fairly — is  whether  he  could 
take  part  as  a  public  man  in  administering  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  without  acting  up  to  his  convictions  of  what 
it  required  at  his  hands.  Few  men,  in  all  our  history,  have 
said  more  impressive  things  respecting  the  wrong  of  slavery 
and  its  inherent  evils  than  he  has.  "No  man  in  our  history  has 
been  more  uniformly  faithful  as  a  statesman  to  the  letter  of  the 
fundamental  law,  to  the  obligation  of  public  compacts,  and  to 
the  dictates  of  that  public  policy  which  results  from  the  pro 
visions  of  a  fixed  constitution.  Let  it  be  determined,  by  the 
fair  judgment  of  mankind,  whether  such  a  character  is  marked 
by  any  inconsistency. 

A  debate  on  the  reception  of  petitions  for  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  commenced  in  the  Senate 
on  the  Yth  of  January,  and  was  continued  at  intervals  until  the 
llth  of  March.  A  great  effort  was  made  to  prevent  their  being 
received  at  all ;  but  the  final  decision  of  the  Senate  was  to  re 
ceive  them,  and  then  immediately  to  reject  their  prayer,  with 
out  any  reference  to  a  committee.  Mr.  "Webster  voted  against 
this  method  of  action.1  He  had  not  participated  in  the  long 
and  excited  discussion  which  preceded  the  vote,  choosing  to 
reserve  the  expression  of  his  opinions  upon  the  course  proper  to 
be  pursued,  until  the  Senate  had  made  its  decision.  But  he  at 
once  proceeded  to  give  an  opportunity  for  reversing  it.  On  the 
16th  of  March,  he  presented  two  petitions  which  had  been  sent 
to  him  from  Massachusetts,  and  another  from  Michigan ;  and 
he  then  stated  with  great  distinctness  that,  while  the  Govern 
ment  of  the  United  States  had  no  control  whatever  over  slavery 
in  the  States,  he  held  it  to  be  entirely  clear  that  Congress  had 

1  The  vote  was  thirty-four  for  the  immediate  rejection  and  six  against  it. 


528  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

full  control  over  it  in  the  District  of  Columbia ;  that  the  prayer 
of  these  petitions  was,  therefore,  not  one  that  could  be  sum 
marily  rejected  on  the  ground  of  want  of  power  to  deal  with 
the  subject ;  that  the  proper  course  to  be  taken  with  them  was 
the  usual  course,  namely,  to  refer  them  to  a  committee  for  con 
sideration  ;  and  that  in  his  opinion  a  report  upon  the  subject, 
fairly  discussing  it  in  all  its  bearings,  would  produce  a  proper 
effect  both  in  and  out  of  the  Senate.  One  of  the  Southern 
Senators  who  followed  him  referred  to  his  having  placed 
himself  "  at  the  head  of  the  petitioners."  He  then  rose  and 
replied : 

"  The  gentleman  cannot  be  allowed,  sir,  to  assign  to  me  any  place  or 
any  character  which  I  do  not  choose  to  take  to  myself.  I  have  only  ex 
pressed  an  opinion  as  to  the  course  which  it  is  prudent  and  wise  in  us 
all  to  adopt  in  disposing  of  these  petitions. 

"  It  is  true  that,  while  the  question  on  the  reception  of  the  petitions 
was  pending,  I  observed  that  I  should  hold  back  these  petitions  till  that 
question  was  decided.  It  is  decided.  The  Senate  has  decided  to  receive 
the  petitions ;  and,  being  received,  the  manner  of  treating  them  necessarily 
arises.  The  origin  of  the  authority  of  Congress  over  this  District,  the  views 
and  objects  of  the  States  in  ceding  the  territory,  the  little  interest  which 
this  Government  has  in  the  general  question  of  slavery,  and  the  great  mag 
nitude  which  individual  States  have  in  it,  the  great  danger  to  the  Govern 
ment  itself  of  agitating  the  question  here,  while  things  remain  in  their 
present  posture  in  States  around  us — these,  sir,  are  considerations  all 
intimately  belonging  to  the  question,  as  I  think,  and  which  a  competent 
committee  would  naturally  present  to  the  Senate  and  to  the  public. 

"Mr.  President,  I  feel  bound  to  make  one  further  remark.  Whatever 
gentlemen  may  think  of  it,  I  assure  them  that  these  petitions,  at  least  in 
many  cases,  have  no  factious  origin.  Such  may  be  the  origin  of  some  of 
them.  I  am  quite  sure  it  is  not  of  all.  Many  of  them  arise  from  a  sense 
of  religious  duty ;  and  that  is  a  feeling  which  should  be  reasoned  with, 
but  cannot  be  suppressed  by  a  mere  summary  exercise  of  authority.  I 
wish  that  all  reasonable  men  may  be  satisfied  with  our  proceedings ;  that 
we  may  so  act  in  regard  to  the  whole  matter  as  shall  promote  harmony, 
strengthen  the  bonds  of  our  Union,  and  increase  the  confidence  both  of  the 
North  and  the  South  in  this  Government." 

His  advice  was  not  followed.  The  capital  error  was  com 
mitted  of  treating  this  subject  of  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia  as  a  question  that  was  not  to  be  discussed 
in  the  legislative  body  which  had  plenary  jurisdiction  over  it, 
and  which  was  necessarily  liable  to  be  approached,  in  regard 


1836.]  SLAVERY  IN  THE  DISTRICT  OF  COLUMBIA.  529 

to  it,  by  citizens  of  the  United  States,  acting  with  various 
motives  and  purposes,  but  acting  in  the  exercise  of  a  right  that 
could  not  be  questioned.  From  this  moment  Mr.  "Webster  saw 
that  a  great  opportunity  was  lost.  He  would  have  had  the 
subject  so  dealt  with  as  to  show  to  the  whole  country  the  clear 
line  of  its  duty  in  regard  to  the  institution  of  slavery  as  it  ex 
isted  in  the  States.  He  was  well  convinced  that,  if  this  occa 
sion  were  suffered  to  pass  without  such  a  course  of  action  as  he 
recommended — if  the  Northern  feeling,  in  regard  to  the  pres 
ence  of  slavery  at  the  seat  of  Government,  was  to  be  met  by  a 
refusal  to  consider  the  subject  at  all — a  long  agitation,  con 
stantly  growing  stronger,  would  produce  a  chronic  irritation 
and  alarm  in  the  slaveholding  States.  He  was  fully  aware  that 
the  introduction  of  Texas  into  the  Union  was  already  looked  to 
as  a  means  of  increasing  the  political  power  of  that  section ; 
and  he  knew  that  here  would  be  a  fresh  provocative  to  the 
Northern  sentiment,  which  was  even  now  but  too  strongly 
stimulated  by  the  efforts  made  to  suppress  it.  But  the  wrong 
step  was  taken — taken  against  his  earnest  warning.  His  mo 
tion  to  refer  the  petitions  was  laid  upon  the  table.  Nothing 
remained  for  him,  therefore,  but  to  watch,  as  he  had  always 
watched,  and  to  guard,  as  he  had  always  guarded,  against  all 
attempts  to  give  unwarrantable  interpretations  to  the  Con 
stitution  ;  and  to  prevent,  so  far  as  he  could,  the  operation 
of  causes  that  plainly  tended  to  the  increase  of  feelings  which 
would  assuredly  weaken  the  bonds  of  the  Union.  It  is  cer 
tainly  probable  that,  if  the  Senate  had  seen  fit  to  refer  these 
petitions  to  a  committee,  he  would  have  been  willing  to  under 
take  such  a  discussion  as  he  desired  should  occur.  "Who  can 
estimate  the  effect  that  would  have  followed,  at  that  day,  from 
a  report  proceeding  from  his  pen,  or  a  speech  by  him,  on  the 
topics  which  he  desired  to  have  treated  ?  The  result  was  that 
slavery,  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  was  left  until  it  could  no 
longer  be  safely  or  successfully  handled ;  it  was  left  for  thirty 
years  as  a  perpetual  cause  of  irritation,  affording  its  own  fuel 
to  the  flames  that  from  other  and  similar  sources  kindled  the 
fires  of  civil  war. 

Among  the  prominent  occurrences  of  this  session,  which 
indicated  the  increasing  irritation  on  the  subject  of  slavery, 
35 


530  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

and  the  causes  which  produced  it,  must  be  ranked  Mr.  Calhoun's 
bill  concerning  "  Incendiary  Publications."  It  proposed  to  pro 
hibit  the  deputy-postmasters  from  delivering  any  printed  mat 
ter  touching  the  subject  of  slavery  in  States  whose  laws  pro 
hibited  the  circulation  of  such  matter.  Mr.  "Webster  did  not 
found  his  opposition  to  this  measure  on  a  denial  of  the  evil 
complained  of.  He  had  not,  he  observed,  a  word  to  say 
against  the  objects  of  the  bill ;  but,  with  constitutional  law 
yers,  there  was  a  great  difference  between  the  object  and  the 
means  of  carrying  it  into  effect.  His  objection  went  to  the 
means.  Looking  to  the  provision  of  the  Constitution,  which 
prohibits  Congress  from  passing  any  law  abridging  the  freedom 
of  speech  or  of  the  press,  he  concluded  that  Congress  had  not 
the  power  to  decide,  from  the  character  of  a  paper,  whether  it 
should  be  carried  in  the  mail  or  not.  Such  a  decision  would 
be  a  direct  abridgment  of  the  freedom  of  the  press.  This 
was  certainly  a  most  important  suggestion ;  and,  perhaps,  an 
equally  important  one  was  directed  by  Mr.  Webster  against 
the  provision  of  the  bill  which  looked  to  the  destruction  of 
papers,  supposed  to  be  prohibited  by  the  laws  of  the  States, 
if  not  withdrawn,  on  notice  to  the  sender,  within  a  certain 
time.  This,  it  was  proposed,  should  be  done  by  the  deputy- 
postmasters.  Mr.  Webster  maintained  the  point  that  a  paper 
sent  in  the  mail  is  the  property  of  the  person  to  whom  it  is 
sent.  If  it  is  property,  it  cannot  be  destroyed  without  "  due 
process  of  law,"  that  is,  without  judicial  trial.  To  make  a 
deputy-postmaster  the  judge  of  whether  it  is  such  a  property 
as  the  person  to  whom  it  is  sent  can  lawfully  possess,  would  "Be 
to  constitute  him  a  judicial  officer  to  determine  a  question  of 
property.  He  also  considered  the  law  unnecessary,  because 
the  States  had  full  power  to  punish  the  deputy-postmasters  for 
circulating  incendiary  publications  in  violation  of  their  laws. 
Similar  views  were  maintained  by  other  Senators,  especially  by 
Mr.  Clay,  who  made  a  strong  opposition  to  the  bill.  It  was 
rejected  by  a  decisive  vote. 

On  the  1st  of  July  the  Senate  adopted  a  resolution,  reported 
by  Mr.  Clay  from  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs,  declaring 
that  the  independence  of  Texas  ought  to  be  acknowledged  by 
the  United  States,  whenever  satisfactory  information  should  be 


1836.]  LOSS  OF  THE  FORTIFICATION  BILL.  531 

received  that  it  had  in  successful  operation  a  civil  government 
capable  of  performing  the  duties  and  fulfilling  the  obligations 
of  an  independent  power.  Mr.  Webster  advocated  this  course, 
and  voted  for  the  resolution,  which  was,  in  fact,  unanimously 
adopted. 

At  this  session  the  President,  in  his  annual  message,  alluded 
to  the  loss  of  the  Fortification  Bill  at  the  close  of  the  last  ses 
sion,  and  said  that  "  much  injury  and  inconvenience  have  been 
experienced  in  consequence  of  "  it.  He  added  that  "  this  failure 
was  the  more  to  be  regretted,  not  only  because  it  interrupted 
and  delayed  the  progress  of  a  system  of  national  defence,  pro 
jected  immediately  after  the  last  war,  and  since  steadily  pur 
sued,  but  also  because  it  contained  a  contingent  appropriation, 
inserted  in  accordance  with  the  views  of  the  Executive,  in  aid 
of  this  important  object,  and  other  branches  of  the  national  de 
fence,  some  portions  of  which  might  have  been  most  usefully 
applied  during  the  past  season." 

This  was  the  first  intimation  that  had  ever  been  given  that 
the  three  million  appropriation  proposed  by  that  bill  was  "  in 
accordance  with  the  views  of  the  Executive ; "  and  even  this 
did  not  go  so  far  as  to  suggest  thp.t  the  appropriation  had  been 
asked  for  or  recommended  by  the  Executive  at  the  time  it  had 
passed  the  House  of  Representatives.  The  censure  implied  in 
the  President's  remarks  fell,  of  course,  upon  the  Senate ;  and 
for  the  Senate's  rejection  of  the  appropriation  Mr.  "Webster  was 
more  responsible  than  any  one  else. 

On  the  14th  of  January,  therefore,  of  the  present  session, 
he  delivered  a  speech,  embracing  an  elaborate  account  of  all  the 
facts  attending  the  loss  of  the  bill  on  the  last  night  of  the  pre 
vious  session,  and  restating  the  grounds  of  his  opposition  to  it. 
He  reminded  the  country  that  the  proposed  appropriation  did 
not  come  before  Congress  with  any  Executive  recommendation, 
and  that  its  character  was  such  that  it  would  have  vested  in  the 
President  a  naked  discretion  as  to  its  expenditure,  without  speci 
fication  of  object  or  purpose,  to  the  entire  exclusion  of  the  ex 
ercise  of  all  judgment  on  the  part  of  Congress.  He  then  said : 
"  The  honorable  member  from  Ohio,1  near  me,  has  said  that,  if 
the  enemy  had  been  on  our  shores,  he  would  not  have  agreed  to 

1  Mr.  Ewing. 


532  LIFE  OP  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXII. 

this  vote.  And  I  say,  if  the  proposition  were  now  before  us, 
and  the  guns  of  the  enemy  were  pointed  against  the  walls  of  the 
Capitol,  I  would  not  agree  to  it" 

On  the  22d  of  January,  a  resolution  was  introduced  into  the 
House  of  Representatives  for  the  appointment  of  a  committee 
to  inquire  into  the  facts  attending  the  loss  of  the  Fortification 
Bill  of  the  last  session.  In  the  course  of  the  discussions  on  this 
resolution,  Mr.  Webster's  remark,  which  is  above  printed  in 
italics,  was  commented  on  with  much  severity.  Although  this 
was  quite  unparliamentary,  Mr.  "Webster  prepared  himself  to 
make  a  reply  to  it  in  his  place  in  the  Senate.  He  very  delib 
erately  wrote  a  speech,  in  defence  of  his  observation,  which  he 
intended  to  read  to  the  Senate  at  the  first  opportunity ;  but  he 
was  dissuaded  from  it  by  friends,  who  considered  it  both  unne 
cessary  and  inexpedient.  The  paper,  however,  is  preserved; 
and  I  make  some  extracts  from  it,  of  a  very  interesting  char 
acter,  which  show  his  adherence,  under  all  emergencies,  real  or 
pretended,  to  the  requirements  of  the  Constitution : 

"  Mr.  President,  I  have  no  intention  of  entering  again  into  this  debate. 
The  resolution  itself,  expressing  the  propriety  of  defending  the  country,  I 
am  quite  ready  to  support  by  my  vote,  and,  as  to  the  various  topics  which 
have  been  discussed,  I  am  willing  to  leave  them  without  further  remark 
from  me. 

"It  might  appear,  however,  affectation  of  dignity,  rather  than  true  dig 
nity  itself,  were  I  to  take  no  notice  whatever  of  certain  extraordinary 
occurrences  which  have  taken  place  since  I  addressed  the  Senate  on  the 
14th  of  January. 

"  In  my  speech,  on  that  day,  I  gave  my  reasons  for  having  opposed  the 
vote  of  the  three  millions,  on  the  last  evening  of  the  last  session.  I  placed 
that  opposition  on  constitutional  grounds.  I  insisted  that  the  proposed 
grant  of  money  had  no  specified  object ;  that  it  had  no  limit,  within  the 
broadest  interpretation  of  whatever  might  be  called  military  service ;  that 
it  conferred  on  the  President  the  power  of  deciding  whether  armies  should 
be  raised,  or  whether  navies  should  be  maintained,  although  these  powers 
are  expressly  confided  by  the  Constitution,  not  to  the  President,  but  to 
Congress ;  that,  under  this  vote,  the  President  might  build  ships,  or  buy 
ships,  or  levy  troops,  or  do  any  thing  which  he  might  choose  to  think  that 
the  military  service  required. 

"  I  endeavored  to  show  that  this  mode  of  proceeding  was,  in  no  just 
sense,  an  appropriation  of  money ;  that  it  appeared  rather  to  be  a  surrender 
of  our  own  powers  and  our  own  duties  to  Executive  discretion ;  that  it 

1  A  speech,  Works,  iv.,  205. 


1836.]  AN  UNPUBLISHED  SPEECH.  533 

was  against  fundamental  principles,  and  the  whole  spirit  of  the  Constitu 
tion  ;  that  it  was  a  dangerous  inroad  on  the  Constitution,  as  it  vested  every 
power,  great  and  small,  respecting  the  military  and  naval  service,  in  the 
President  alone,  without  specification  of  object  or  limitation  of  purpose, 
and  to  the  exclusion  of  the  exercise  of  all  judgment  on  the  part  of  Con 
gress. 

"  Holding  this  opinion  of  the  proposed  grant,  fully  believing  it  to  be 
repugnant  to  plain  constitutional  injunctions,  and  a  most  alarming  exten 
sion  of  the  Executive  authority,  I  declared  that  I  could  not  agree  in  it ; 
and  added  these  remarks :  '  The  honorable  member  from  Ohio,  near  me,  has 
said  that,  if  the  enemy  had  heen  on  our  shores,  he  would  not  have  agreed  to  this 
wte.  And  I  say,  if  the  proposition  were  now  before  us,  and  the  guns  of  the 
enemy  were  Mattering  against  the  walls  of  the  Capitol,  I  would  not  agree  to  it. 

" '  The  people  of  this  country  have  an  interest,  a  property,  an  inheritance, 
in  this  instrument,  against  the  value  of  which  forty  capitols  do  not  weigh  the 
twentieth  part  of  one  poor  scruple.  There  can  never  le  any  necessity  for  such 
proceedings  hut  a  feigned  and  false  necessity,  a  mere  idle  and  hollow  pretence 
of  necessity  ;  least  of  all  can  it  he  said  that  any  such  necessity  actually  existed 
on  the  3d  of  March.  There  was  no  enemy  on  our  shores ;  there  were  no  guns 
pointed  against  the  Capitol;  we  were  in  no  war,  nor  was  there  a  reasonable 
probability  tliat  we  should  have  war,  unless  we  made  it  ourselves.'' 

"  Now,  sir,  whether  I  was  right  or  wrong  in  my  judgment  of  the  true 
character  of  the  proposed  grant,  no  man,  of  common  intelligence  and 
common  candor,  can  infer  any  thing  from  these  remarks  of  mine  but  a  con 
viction  on  my  part  of  the  great  impropriety  of  the  grant,  a  full  belief  that 
it  was  inconsistent  with  constitutional  provisions,  and  a  fixed  resolution  to 
prefer  the  safety  and  integrity  of  the  Constitution  to  every  political  interest. 
I  had  only  repeated,  in  other  language,  the  sentiment  of  the  gentleman  from 
Ohio,  to  which  nobody  had  thought  of  taking  any  exception. 

"  Gentlemen  might  say  I  was  mistaken ;  that  the  proposed  vote  did  not 
violate  constitutional  provisions ;  that  it  did  not  dangerously  extend  Ex 
ecutive  power  and  discretion ;  all  this  gentlemen  might  say,  and,  undoubt 
edly,  those  gentlemen  did  so  think  who  agreed  to  the  vote  themselves. 

"  But  there  is  no  member  of  the  Senate  who  will  say  that,  if  he  himself 
had  honestly  entertained  the  opinion  which  I  expressed,  he  would  have 
supported  the  grant,  either  to  save  the  Capitol  or  to  preserve  any  other 
public  interest. 

"  No  gentleman  can  say  so,  without  admitting  that  he  regards  the  in 
tegrity  of  the  Constitution  as  a  subordinate  matter,  a  thing  which  may  be 
surrendered  in  a  political  emergency  like  that  of  war  and  invasion.  Every 
man  must  see  that  my  expression  was  merely  one  of  preference  for  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  country  over  all  other  interests,  and  its  preservation  an 
object  so  vital,  so  paramount,  in  my  judgment  and  feeling,  as  not  to  be 
hazarded  in  any  emergency,  real  or  pretended.  This,  sir,  every  man  must 
see  to  have  been  my  meaning,  and  my  only  meaning,  and,  if  he  is  an  honest 
man,  he  must  acknowledge  and  admit  it.  ... 


534  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

"  Sir,  if  I  am  guilty  of  idolatry  toward  any  object  on  earth,  it  must  be 
found  in  the  homage  I  bear  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  I 
have  been  bred  in  the  reverence  and  in  the  love  of  that  Constitution.  I 
think  I  have  some  knowledge  of  its  history,  its  spirit,  and  its  principles ; 
but,  however  that  may  be,  I  am  sure  I  have  ample  knowledge  of  its  bless 
ings  in  the  prosperity  which  it  has  spread  around  us  all  at  home,  and  in 
the  national  distinction  which,  under  its  fortunate  star  and  beneficent 
guidance,  we  have  attained  abroad.  These  are  the  grounds  of  my  attach 
ment  to  it. 

"It  is  not,  sir,  that  this  Constitution,  or  the  Government  established 
under  it,  has  ever  enriched  or  particularly  benefited  me  or  mine.  I  have 
never  held  an  office,  unless  it  be  an  office  to  represent  the  people  in  one  or 
the  other  branch  of  this  Legislature.  I  have  received  no  favors,  and  asked 
no  favors,  at  any  time,  or  from  any  hand.  Not  one  of  those  in  whose 
veins  there  runs  a  drop  of  blood  kindred  to  my  own  has  enjoyed  office,  or 
profit,  or  patronage,  or  favor  of  any  kind,  under  this  Government. 

"  I  have,  sir,  devoted  no  small  labor,  I  have  given  the  best  years  of  my 
life,  I  have  sacrificed  professional  emolument,  and  I  have  done  all  this 
cheerfully,  for  the  honor  of  serving  the  people  in  Congress,  with  no  other 
object  than  to  secure  their  favor  and  confidence,  and  a  desire,  I  hope  not 
too  ambitious,  of  being  numbered  among  those  who  have  done  something, 
in  their  day  and  generation,  to  uphold  the  free  institutions  of  the  country, 
and  to  maintain  the  bond  of  our  happy  and  glorious  Union. 

"  With  this  unaffected  attachment  to  the  Constitution,  with  this  sedu 
lous  care  for  it,  with  a  habit,  I  confess,  which  leads  me,  on  every  great 
measure,  and  especially  on  every  new  and  extraordinary  proposition,  to 
consider,  first  and  mainly,  its  bearing  on  that  great  security  for  our  liberties 
and  our  Union,  I  saw  a  grant  of  money  to  the  Executive  proposed  at  the 
last  session,  which  I  thought  inconsistent  with  its  fundamental  provisions, 
and  dangerous  to  its  permanent  safety.  So  thinking,  I  said  in  my  place, 
the  other  day,  that  I  could  not  have  voted  for  it  if  the  enemy  were  batter 
ing  against  the  Capitol !  And,  so  thinking,  could  I  so  vote,  even  in  that 
state  of  things  ?  Could  any  honest  man,  holding  my  sentiments,  so  vote, 
in  that  or  any  other  emergency  ?  .  .  ." 

The  financial  measures  of  this  session  attracted  a  large  share 
of  Mr.  "Webster's  attention,  not  merely  from  his  position  as 
chairman  of  the  Finance  Committee,  but  because  he  saw  and 
foretold  the  approaching  bankruptcies  and  distress  which  were 
to  overspread  the  country,  in  consequence  of  the  condition  into 
which  its  currency  had  been  brought.  But  it  was  not  in  his 
power,  or  in  that  of  any  other  opponent  of  the  Administration, 
wholly  to  prevent  the  mischiefs  which  he  predicted.  The  con 
dition  of  things  was  most  extraordinary.  By  the  President's 


1836.]  USE  OF  PUBLIC  FUNDS  FOR  SPECULATION.  535 

refusal  to  continue  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  and  by  the 
removal  of  the  deposits  to  the  custody  of  certain  State  banks, 
the  public  funds  were  now  under  the  control  of  the  Executive. 
By  the  veto  of  the  Land  Bill  of  1833,  a  bill  which  was  de 
signed  to  prevent  an  accumulation  of  money  in  the  Treasury, 
there  was  now  a  large  surplus,  which  was  growing  larger.  These 
effects  had  led  to  a  great  increase  in  the  number  of  the  State 
banks,  over  whose  excessive  issues  of  paper  money  there  was 
no  existing  check.  These  evils,  Mr.  Webster  said,  were  begun, 
and  could  no  longer  be  averted.  They  flowed  from  the  dispo 
sition  to  submit  every  thing  to  the  will  of  the  Executive,  and 
to  permit  the  constitutional  powers  of  Congress  to  lie  dormant, 
because  the  Executive  would  not  allow  them  to  be  exercised. 
In  reference  to  this  tendency,  he  said  that  the  future  historian 
of  recent  events  in  this  country  would  find  no  topic  more  promi 
nent  and  important  than  a  review  of  the  doctrines  which  had 
been  advanced  with  regard  to  Executive  power,  and  the  means 
employed  to  increase  it.1 

In  the  latter  part  of  April  he  brought  this  state  of  things  to 
the  attention  of  the  Senate,  in  a  striking  manner,  when  speak 
ing  upon  Mr.  Benton's  resolution  to  require  payments  for  the 
public  lands  to  be  made  in  gold  and  silver.  Two  measures,  he 
said,  were  then  before  the  Senate,  of  the  highest  importance : 
one  to  diminish  the  public  fund,  the  other  to  secure  its  safety. 
He  desired  to  know  what  was  to  be  done  with  these  proposi 
tions.  It  was  absolutely  essential  that  the  public  money  should 
be  more  equally  distributed  over  the  country  than  it  then  was. 

The  disposition  which  had  prevailed  among  the  supporters 
of  the  Administration,  at  the  last  session,  to  leave  the  public 
moneys  on  deposit  in  certain  State  banks,  selected  by  the  Ex 
ecutive,  without  regulation  of  law,  now  began  to  be  relaxed. 
The  effect  of  placing  such  large  amounts  of  money  in  the  hands 
of  institutions  not  originally  organized  to  receive  and  manage 
them  had  been,  to  stimulate  a  spirit  of  wild  speculation,  which 
was  now,  in  fact,  using  the  public  money  to  buy  up  great  quan 
tities  of  Government  lands  in  the  "West,  paying  for  them  with 
funds  borrowed  of  the  deposit  banks,  which,  on  being  received 
at  the  land-offices,  were  again  transferred  by  the  Treasury,  to 

1  Works,  iv.,  245. 


536  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

be  again  deposited  in  the  selected  banks  in  the  Eastern  cities. 
It  had  become  apparent  tha't,  at  the  end  of  the  present  year, 
the  Government  would  have  on  hand  a  large  surplus ;  but  this 
surplus  was  in  the  hands  of  agents,  who  were  under  no  regula 
tion  of  law.  Before  the  end  of  May,  Mr.  "Webster  had  satisfied 
himself,  by  careful  inquiry,  that,  at  the  close  of  the  year,  this 
surplus  would  amount  to  $40,000,000.  Its  existence  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  banking  companies  was  of  no  real  advantage  to 
men  engaged  in  regular  business  of  any  kind.  Men  in  the  ordi 
nary  avocations  of  life,  whether  commercial  or  agricultural, 
were  subjected  to  embarrassment  and  difficulty  in  their  pur 
suits,  being  unable  to  procure  the  facilities  that  were  ex 
tended  to  speculators,  whose  employment  of  money  which, 
in  fact,  belonged  to  the  Government,  resulted  in  the  ex 
change  of  the  public  lands  for  unsound  and  unavailable  bank 
credits. 

Mr.  Webster,  as  it  has  abundantly  appeared,  was  in  no  de 
gree  responsible  for  this  state  of  things.  But  he  was  not  un 
willing  to  give  all  his  aid  to  counteract  its  mischiefs.  lie  did 
not,  indeed,  believe  that  the  State  banks,  as  depositaries  of  the 
public  money,  could,  by  any  thing  that  Congress  might  do  with 
them,  be  made  to  furnish  a  sound  general  currency  for  the 
country,  or  a  system  of  internal  exchanges  equal  to  the  wants 
of  the  commercial  community.  He  said  that  the  deposit-bank 
system  never  could  become  the  permanent  system  of  the  coun 
try,  by  any  regulation  that  Congress  could  apply  to  it.  Never 
theless,  regulation  was  indispensable  to  prevent  certain  gross 
evils  that  were  now  apparent  and  pressing.  Without  assuming 
any  lead  in  relation  to  a  system  which  he  disapproved,  either 
in  what  might  be  done  or  omitted  respecting  it,  he  made  known 
his  opinions  on  two  very  important  points  when  a  bill  to  regu 
late  the  deposits  of  the  public  moneys  was  before  the  Senate. 
These  opinions  related  to  the  increase  of  the  deposit  banks,  so 
as  to  prevent  the  accumulation  of  large  amounts  of  the  pub 
lic  money  in  a  few  favored  banks  ;  to  certain  restraints  to 
be  imposed  on  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  prevent  him 
from  ordering  funds  from  one  bank  to  another,  for  any  other 
reason  than  the  exigencies  of  the  public  service  ;  and  to 
a  requirement  that  each  deposit  bank  should  have  at  all 


1836.]  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  FKENCH  QUESTION.  537 

times  an  amount  of  specie  bearing  a  certain  proportion  to  its 
debts  and  liabilities.  These  three  regulations  would,  he  said, 
bestow  on  these  banks  some  power  of  useful  action ;  although, 
having  never  been  originally  designed  for  any  thing  but  local 
purposes,  they  could  never  be  made  into  a  perfect  general  sys 
tem  for  the  regulation  of  the  currency  of  the  country,  and  the 
facilitating  of  domestic  exchanges.  In  relation  to  the  disposi 
tion  that  ought  to  be  made  of  the  great  surplus  which  it  was 
quite  certain  the  Government  would  have  at  the  close  of  the 
year,  while  he  held  it  to  be  on  all  accounts  desirable  to  reduce 
the  amount  of  money  in  the  Treasury,  he  had  an  insuperable 
objection  to  the  introduction  of  a  settled  practice  of  distributing 
the  surplus  revenues  of  the  General  Government  among  the 
States.  "  I  cannot  reconcile  myself,"  he  said,  "  to  the  spectacle 
of  the  States  receiving  their  revenues,  their  means  even  of  sup 
porting  their  own  governments,  from  the  Treasury  of  the 
United  States.  If,  indeed,  the  Land  Bill  could  pass,  and  we 
could  act  on  the  policy,  which  I  think  the  true  policy,  of  re 
garding  the  public  lands  as  a  fund  belonging  to  the  people  of  all 
the  States,  I  should  cheerfully  concur  in  that  policy,  and  be 
willing  to  make  an  annual  distribution  of  the  proceeds  of  the 
lands,  for  some  years  at  least.  But,  if  we  cannot  separate  the 
proceeds  of  the  lands  from  other  revenue,  if  all  must  go  into 
the  Treasury  together,  and  there  remain  together,  then  I  have 
no  hesitation  in  declaring  now  that  the  income  from  customs 
must  be  reduced.  It  must  be  reduced,  even  at  the  hazard  of 
injury  to  some  branches  of  manufacturing  industry;  because 
this,  in  my  opinion,  would  be  a  less  evil  than  that  extraordinary 
and  dangerous  state  of  things  in  which  the  United  States  would 
be  found,  laying  and  collecting  taxes  for  the  purpose  of  dis 
tributing  them,  when  collected,  among  the  States  of  the 
Union." 

He  limited  himself,  therefore,  on  this  occasion,  to  a  provision 
for  depositing  with  the  States  the  surplus  that  might  be  in  the 
Treasury  at  the  end  of  the  present  year ;  and  for  this  purpose 
he  introduced  an  amendment  which  in  substance  became  a  part 
of  the  law  as  it  was  finally  passed. 

Concerning  the  French  question,  it  is  only  necessary  to  say 
that  the  President,  on  the  15th  of  January,  recommended  par- 


538  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXII. 

tial  non-intercourse  with  France  ;  but  that  soon  afterward  the 
Government  of  Great  Britain  offered  its  mediation,  and  that 
through  this  intervention  the  whole  affair  was  finally  adjusted. 
Congress  adjourned  on  the  4th  of  July,  and  Mr.  "Webster 
went  immediately  to  Marshfield,  where  he  remained  through  the 
summer  and  autumn.  "When  the  time  for  the  general  election 
drew  near,  it  was  understood  in  Massachusetts  that  a  great 
majority  of  its  citizens  demanded  the  choice  of  presidential 
electors  who  would  cast  the  vote  of  the  State  for  Mr.  "Webster ; 
although  the  want  of  cooperation  elsewhere,  arising  from  the 
imperfect  organization  of  the  Whig  party,  rendered  it  impos 
sible  that  he  should  be  chosen  President.  As  soon  as  it  was 
known  that  the  body  of  electors,  through  whom  this  compli 
ment  was  intended  to  be  paid  to  him,  had  been  appointed  by 
the  votes  of  the  people  of  the  State,  the  following  correspond 
ence  took  place  between  Mr.  Webster  and  the  gentleman  who 
was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  electoral  body : 

[TO  MR.   SILSBEE.] 

"  BOSTON,  November  15, 1836. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  It  appears  highly  probable  that  the  election  of  yes 
terday  has  terminated  in  the  choice  of  yourself  and  the  other  gentlemen  on 
the  same  list  as  electors  of  President  and  Vice-President  of  the  United 
States  in  behalf  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts. 

"  This  result,  the  relation  in  which  I  have  stood  to  the  people  of  the 
commonwealth  during  the  contest,  and  events  which  have  transpired  or 
are  anticipated  in  other  States,  have  rendered  it  proper  in  my  judgment 
that  I  should  address  you  this  letter  to  be  laid  before  the  electors  when 
they  shall  assemble. 

"  My  purpose  is  to  say  that,  in  the  discharge  of  their  high  and  most  in 
teresting  trust,  it  is  my  earnest  wish  that  they  should  act  with  entire  free 
dom  from  all  considerations  merely  personal  to  myself;  and  that  they 
should  give  the  vote  of  the  State  in  the  manner  they  think  most  likely  to 
be  useful  in  supporting  the  Constitution  and  laws  of  the  country,  the  union 
of  the  States,  the  perpetuity  of  our  republican  institutions,  and  the  im 
portant  interests  of  the  whole  country ;  and  in  maintaining  the  character 
of  Massachusetts  for  integrity,  honor,  national  patriotism,  and  fidelity  to 
the  Constitution. 

"  I  am,  dear  sir,  with  sentiments  of  the  truest  esteem,  your  friend  and 

obedient  servant, 

WEBSTER." 


1836.]     KECEIYES  THE  ELECTORAL  YOTE  OF  MASSACHUSETTS.        539 
[FROM  MR.  SILSBEE.] 

"SENATE-CHAMBER,  BOSTON,  December  27, 1836. 

"MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  only  time  to  say  to  you  that,  at  the  meeting  of 
the  electors  yesterday  afternoon  (for  organization,  etc.),  your  letter  was 
laid  before  them,  and  well  received  by  all  of  them — it  will  appear,  with  the 
further  proceedings  of  to-day,  in  the  newspapers  of  to-morrow.  The  con 
sultation  which  took  place  between  the  members  of  the  college  yesterday 
was  such  as  to  leave  no  doubt  on  my  mind  that  the  vote  of  the  members 
will  be  unanimous  for  yourself  as  President,  and  Mr.  Granger  as  Vice- 
President.  In  great  haste, 

"  Yours  truly, 

"NATH.  SILSBEE. 

"  Hon.  D.  Webster. 

"  One,  p.  M. — The  votes  have  been  taken,  and  declared  as  above." 


540  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 


CHAPTEE   XXIII. 
1836-1837. 

THE  "SPECIE  CIRCULAR"  —  A  "CONSTITUTIONAL  CURRENCY"  —  MR. 
BENTON'S  EXPUNGING  RESOLUTION  —  MR.  WEBSTER'S  PROTEST  — 
SLAVERY  IN  THE  DISTRICT  OF  COLUMBIA  —  RECEPTION  OF  PETI 
TIONS  —  FARMING  OPERATIONS  —  PROPOSES  TO  RESIGN  HIS  SEAT 
-  RECEPTION  IN  NEW  YORK  —  SPEECH  AT  NTBLo's  SALOON  — 
JOURNEY  TO  THE  WEST  —  SPECIAL  SESSION  OF  CONGRESS  IN 
THE  AUTUMN  OF  1837  —  MR.  VAN  BUREN's  FINANCIAL  POLICY  — 
CONTROVERSY  WITH  MR.  CALHOUN  —  TEXAS  SEEKS  ADMISSION 
INTO  THE  UNION. 


subjects  of  currency  and  finance,  which  had  occupied 
so  much  of  the  attention  of  Congress  and  the  country 
since  the  summer  of  1833,  still  predominated  over  all  others, 
when  Congress  assembled  in  December,  1836  ;  and  they  were 
to  be  left  by  General  Jackson  to  his  successor,  in  an  unfor 
tunate  legacy  of  temporary  expedients,  the  effects  of  which 
were  finally  destined  to  bring  their  political  opponents  into 
power.  Mr.  Yan  Buren  had  been  elected  President,  and  it 
was  understood  that  the  policy,  which  had  governed  the  ad 
ministration  of  affairs  since  the  experiment  was  instituted  of 
dispensing  with  the  agency  of  a  national  bank,  was  to  be  con 
tinued.  In  July  of  the  year  1836,  there  was  a  large  amount 
of  the  public  money  lying  in  the  deposit  banks,  the  accumula 
tion  of  the  customs  receipts  and  the  receipts  at  the  land-offices. 
With  the  professed  object  of  checking  speculation  in  the  public 
lands,  of  discouraging  the  excessive  issues  of  bank  paper,  and  of 


A  CONSTITUTIONAL  CURRENCY.  541 

increasing  the  specie  currency,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  on 
the  llth  of  July,  issued  the  famous  "  Specie  Circular,"  which  di 
rected  that  nothing  but  gold  and  silver  should,  after  a  certain 
period,  be  received  at  the  land-offices,  in  payment  for  the  public 
lands.  The  operation  of  this  requirement,  in  the  actual  condi 
tion  of  the  currency,  was  the  reverse  of  its  ostensible  and  in 
tended  purpose.  The  tendency  was  first  to  drain  the  specie  of 
the  country  into  the  vaults  of  the  deposit  banks,  by  means  of 
the  land-offices,  and  then  to  keep  it  moving  backward  and  for 
ward  through  the  country  in  masses.  As  this  weakened  the 
banks  which  were  not  depositaries  of  the  public  funds,  and  thus 
obliged  them  to  curtail  their  loans,  it  produced  a  great  scarcity 
of  money  in  regions  wrhere  money  was  most  wanted.  On  the 
assembling  of  Congress  in  December,  the  internal  exchanges  of 
the  country  were  much  deranged,  and  a  general  suspension  of 
specie  payments  by  the  banks  seemed  inevitable  at  no  distant 
period.  There  was,  therefore,  an  immediate  necessity  for  rid 
ding  the  country  of  this  Treasury  order ;  which  had,  in  fact,  no 
authority  of  law,  since  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  had  never 
been  empowered  to  discriminate  in  respect  to  the  'media  for 
payments  at  the  land-offices  and  the  custom-houses.  In  prac 
tical  operation,  too,  it  had  no  other  effect  than  to  increase  the 
evils  arising  from  the  want  of  some  competent  regulator  of  the 
currency  actually  in  use  throughout  the  country. 

Upon  a  resolution  introduced  into  the  Senate,  at  an  early 
period  of  the  session,  to  rescind  the  "  Specie  Circular,"  Mr.  "Web 
ster  delivered  a  speech  on  the  21st  of  December,  which  is  now 
important  chiefly  for  two  reasons :  First,  because  it  contains  a 
clear  and  succinct  statement  of  his  opinions  respecting  the  con 
stitutional  relations  of  the  General  Government  to  whatever 
circulates  as  money ;  secondly,  because  it  exhibits  the  mode  in 
which  an  excessive  circulation  of  bank  notes  results  from  a  dis 
turbance  in  the  domestic  exchanges,  and  is  at  the  same  time  a 
cause  of  that  disturbance.  With  regard  to  the  relations  of  the 
Government  to  the  circulating  medium,  he  held  that  the  legal 
standard  of  value,  established  in  the  regulated  coin,  can  never 
be  displaced ; x  but  that  an  exclusive  circulation  of  gold  and 

1  The  whole  argument  which  denies  any  thing  but  gold  and  silver  a  legal  ten- 
the  constitutional  possibility  of  making  der,  or  of  substituting  any  other  stand- 


542 


LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 


[Cn.  XXIII. 


silver  is  impracticable.  He  considered  that  a  mixed  currency, 
partly  coin  and  partly  bank  notes,  the  notes  not  issued  in  ex 
cess,  and  always  convertible  into  specie  at  the  will  of  the  holder, 
is,  in  the  present  state  of  society,  the  best  practicable  currency ; 
but  that  it  is  always  to  be  remembered  that,  in  a  great  com 
mercial  country,  bills  of  exchange  necessarily  perform  a  large 
part  of  the  duty  of  currency,  and  hence  arises  the  necessity  of 
considering  their  function  in  the  operations  of  business  as  a 
part  of  the  currency.  To  prevent  an  excessive  issue  of  bank 
notes,  which  even  their  convertibility  into  specie  will  not  al 
ways  check,  and  to  prevent  the  effect  of  overtrading  which  will 
sometimes  introduce  great  amounts  of  exchange  not  represent 
ing  actual  transactions  of  business,  require  the  constant  care, 
watchfulness,  and  superintendence  of  Government.  The  power 
of  coinage,  and  the  power  and  duty  of  regulating  commerce, 
both  external  and  internal,  gave  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  in  his  opinion,  a  rightful  control  over  the  whole  mass 


ard  of  values,  is  stated  in  a  single  para 
graph  of  this  speech,  with  a  strength, 
simplicity,  and  cogency,  that  have  never 
been  surpassed :  "  But  what  is  meant 
by  the  *  constitutional  currency,'  about 
which  so  much  is  said  ?  What  species 
or  forms  of  currency  does  the  Constitu 
tion  allow,  and  what  does  it  forbid  ?  It 
is  plain  enough  that  this  depends  on 
what  we  understand  by  currency.  Cur 
rency,  in  a  large,  and  perhaps  in  a  just 
sense,  includes  not  only  gold  and  silver 
and  bank  notes,  but  bills  of  exchange 
also.  It  may  include  all  that  adjusts  ex 
changes  and  settles  balances  in  the  oper 
ations  of  trade  and  business.  But  if  we 
understand  by  currency  the  legal  money 
of  the  country,  and  that  which  consti 
tutes  a  lawful  tender  for  debts,  and  is  the 
statute  measure  of  value,  then,  undoubt 
edly,  nothing  is  included  but  gold  and 
silver.  Most  unquestionably  there  is  no 
legal  tender,  and  there  can  be  no  legal 
tender,  in  this  country,  under  the  author 
ity  of  this  Government,  or  any  other,  but 
gold  and  silver,  either  the  coinage  of  our 
own  mints  or  foreign  coins,  at  rates  regu 
lated  by  Congress.  This  is  a  constitu 
tional  principle,  perfectly  plain,  and  of 
the  very  highest  importance.  The  States 
are  expressly  prohibited  from  making 
any  thing  but  gold  and  silver  a  tender  in 
payment  of  debts ;  and  although  no  such 
express  prohibition  'is  applied  to  Con 


gress,  yet,  as  Congress  has  no  power 
granted  to  it,  in  this  respect,  but  to  coin 
money  and  regulate  the  value  of  foreign 
coins,  it  clearly  has  no  power  to  substi 
tute  paper,  or  any  thing  else,  for  coin, 
as  a  tender  in  payment  of  debts  and  in 
discharge  of  contracts.  Congress  has 
exercised  this  power  fully  in  both  its 
branches.  It  has  coined  money,  and 
still  coins  it ;  it  has  regulated  the  value 
of  foreign  coins,  and  still  regulates  their 
value.  The  legal  tender,  therefore,  the 
constitutional  standard  of  value,  is  estab 
lished,  and  cannot  be  overthrown.  To 
overthrow  it  would  shake  the  whole  sys 
tem.  But  if  the  Constitution  knows  only 
gold  and  silver  as  a  legal  tender,  does  it 
follow  that  the  Constitution  cannot  toler 
ate  the  voluntary  circulation  of  bank 
notes,  convertible  into  gold  and  silver  at 
the  will  of  the  holder,  as  part  of  the  actual 
money  of  the  country.  Is  a  man  not 
only  to  be  entitled  to  demand  gold  and 
silver  for  every  debt,  but  is  he,  or  should 
he  be,  obliged  to  demand  it  in  all  cases  ? 
Is  it,  or  should  Government  make  it,  un 
lawful  to  receive  pay  in  any  thing  else  ? 
Such  a  notion  is  too  absurd  to  be  serious 
ly  treated.  The  constitutional  tender  is 
the  thing  to  be  preserved,  and  it  ought 
to  be  preserved  sacredly,  under  all  cir 
cumstances.  The  rest  remains  for  judi 
cious  legislation  by  those  who  have  com 
petent  authority." 


1836.]  A  CONSTITUTIONAL  CURRENCY.  543 

of  whatever  circulates  as  money.  From  the  peculiar  condition 
of  things  in  which  he  was  then  speaking — a  condition  which 
was  yet  to  continue  some  time  longer,  and  to  end  in  great  dis 
aster — this  control  was  entirely  surrendered  by  the  national 
Government  to  the  eight-and-twenty  States  then  composing  the 
Union,  and  sixty  or  eighty  millions  of  banking  capital  had 
been  added  to  the  whole  mass  since  1832 ;  a  thing  that  he  had 
foreseen  and  foretold.  Up  to  this  point  the  great  prosperity 
of  the  country,  and  the  increase  of  its  property,  had  prevented 
a  depreciation  of  the  currency,  and  the  banks  still  maintained 
specie  payments.  But  in  the  absence  of  any  means  of  national 
control  over  the  currency,  and  in  the  want  of  any  national  sys 
tem  of  exchanges,  the  office  of  which  must  be  supplied  by  send 
ing  masses  of  bank  notes  from  place  to  place,  he  said  that  there 
must  be  an  unnatural  increase  of  paper  circulation ;  an  excess 
which  had  been  foreseen,  which  the  deposit-bank  system  had 
been  entirely  incapable  of  preventing,  and  which  could  not  be 
prevented  unless  the  national  Government  should  exercise  the 
powers  conferred  upon  it.  For  the  administration  of  the 
finances  of  the  country,  for  the  facility  of  internal  exchanges, 
and  for  the  due  control  and  regulation  of  the  actual  currency,  he 
still  held  a  national  institution,  under  proper  guards  and  limits, 
to  be  the  best  means  within  the  reach  of  Congress.  With  re 
spect  to  the  mode  of  removing  the  obnoxious  Treasury  circular, 
he  was  indifferent.  A  bill  was  passed  for  this  purpose,  but  at  so 
late  a  period  in  the  session,  that  the  President  did  not  return  it, 
and  it  failed  to  become  a  law.  But  two  days  before  the  bill  was 
passed,  Mr.  Webster  presented  a  petition,  signed  by  fourteen 
or  fifteen  hundred  mercantile  firms  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
praying  for  the  establishment  of  a  national  bank.  On  this 
occasion  he  reiterated  his  opinion  that  this  would  be  found  to 
be  the  true  remedy  for  the  existing  disturbance  in  the  monetary 
affairs  of  the  country,  and  that  the  claim  of  power  which  the 
Administration  had  asserted,  to  use  banking  corporations  in 
the  fiscal  concerns  of  the  Government,  necessarily  conceded  the 
power  to  create  such  corporations.  But  he  repeated  his  deter 
mination  not  to  make  any  movement  toward  the  establishment 
of  a  national  bank  until  public  opinion  should  call  for  it.  He 
acknowledged  that  the  impression  hostile  to  such  an  institution 


544  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXHI. 

had  become  so  general,  that  any  action  upon  it  in  Congress 
would  then  be  in  vain.  But  he  said  that  experience  on  these 
subjects  would  be  likely  to  make  the  country  wiser  than  it  then 
was. 

The  resolution  introduced  by  Mr.  Benton  during  the  last 
session,  "  for  expunging "  from  the  Journals  of  the  Senate  its 
resolution  of  December  26, 1833 — which  pronounced  the  control 
assumed  by  the  President  over  the  Treasury  unwarranted  by 
the  Constitution  and  the  laws — was  now  again  brought  forward 
under  circumstances  plainly  indicating  that  it  was  to  be  passed. 
In  any  period  of  our  history  that  has  since  elapsed,  or  in  any 
that  may  occur  hereafter  while  this  form  of  government  con 
tinues,  it  is  not  probable  that  intelligent  and  impartial  men 
have  been,  or  will  be,  able  to  deny  that  either  House  of  Con 
gress,  holding  the  opinion  that  the  Executive  had  usurped  a 
legislative  function,  could  rightfully  express  that  opinion  in  the 
form  in  which  the  Senate  in  1833  recorded  in  its  Journal  its 
opinion  of  the  acts  of  President  Jackson.  Having  recorded 
that  opinion,  the  Constitution  made  the  record  sacred  and  in 
delible.  Men  might  differ  about  the  original  propriety  or 
justice  of  the  record ;  but  the  Senate  had  decided  on  the 
question  of  right  by  passing  the  resolution.  It  stood  among 
the  recorded  proceedings  of  the  Senate ;  and  the  Constitution 
peremptorily  required  each  branch  of  the  Legislature  to  keep  a 
Journal  of  its  proceedings.  But  now,  in  deference  to  the  Presi 
dent,  who  was  soon  to  go  out  of  office,  his  friends,  who  held  a 
majority  of  votes  in  the  Senate,  resolved  to  have  the  Journal 
brought  into  the  Senate  by  its  secretary,  and  directed  him  to 
draw  "  black  lines  "  around  the  obnoxious  resolution,  and  to 
write  across  it,  in  "  strong  letters,"  the  words  "  expunged  by 
order  of  the  Senate,  this  16th  day  of  January,  in  the  year  of  our 
Lord  1837." 

A  proceeding  so  fantastic  and  theatrical  could  scarcely  have 
been  perpetrated  in  any  other  than  a  time  of  high  party  excite 
ment,  or  from  any  other  than  party  motives.  To  obliterate 
from  history  the  fact  that  the  Senate  of  1833  had  expressed  a 
certain  opinion  of  some  of  the  President's  acts,  was  of  course 
impossible ;  and  if  the  Senate  of  1837  desired  to  soothe  the  feel 
ings  of  the  President  by  expressing  their  opinion  that  he  had 


1836.]  THE  EXPUNGING  RESOLUTION.  545 

been  unjustly  censured,  the  two  conflicting  opinions  might 
have  gone  down  to  posterity,  and  the  last  would  have  stood  as 
a  reversal  of  a  legislative  proceeding  which  is  brought  about 
by  a  change  of  men  or  of  sentiments.  But  the  friends  of 
the  President  sought  for  what  they  considered  an  imposing 
form  of  stigmatizing  the  original  record ;  and,  in  seeking  for 
the  means  of  doing  this,  they  selected  a  mode  which  in  express 
terms  they  dominated  an  "  expunging  "  of  the  resolution  from 
the  "  Journal,"  and  thus  plainly  violated  the  Constitution.  But 
for  this,  it  is  not  at  all  probable  that  Mr.  Webster  would  have 
said  any  thing  on  the  subject.  What  his  opinions  were  respect 
ing  the  original  resolution  had  been  fully  made  known  at  the 
time ;  and  now,  in  all  the  discussion  which  ensued  upon  Mr. 
Benton's  resolution  to  expunge  the  record,  he  took  no  part, 
either  to  vindicate  his  former  vote,  or  to  go  over  the  grounds 
which  had  led  to  the  action  of  the  Senate  in  1833.  But  when 
the  debate  on  Mr.  Benton's  proposition  was  closed,  and  it  was 
about  to  be  voted  on,  he  rose  in  his  place,  and,  in  behalf  of  his 
colleague,  Mr.  Davis,  and  himself,  read  a  solemn  protest  against 
the  meditated  violation  of  the  Journal  of  the  Senate.  This 
paper  will  stand  as  long  as  the  act  against  which  it  was  directed 
shall  be  known — marking  the  character  of  a  transaction  by 
which  a  part  of  the  original  Journal  of  the  Senate  was  sought 
to  be  stricken  out  of  existence ;  presenting  "  to  the  common- 
sense  and  understanding  of  mankind  "  the  plain  meaning  of 
the  constitutional  injunction  which  required  the  Senate  "  to 
keep  "  its  Journal ;  and  holding  up  to  the  view  of  future  times 
the  spectacle  then  exhibited,  of  respectable  States  instructing 
their  representatives  to  vote  for  a  mutilation  of  the  records  of 
one  of  the  Houses  of  Congress. 

"  Mr.  President :  Upon  the  truth  and  justice  of  the  original  resolution 
of  the  Senate,  and  upon  the  authority  of  the  Senate  to  pass  that  resolution, 
I  had  an  opportunity  to  express  my  opinions  at  a  -subsequent  period,  when 
the  President's  Protest  was  before  us. 

"  Those  opinions  remain  altogether  unchanged.  And  now,  had  the  Con 
stitution  secured  the  privilege  of  entering  a  protest  on  the  Journal,  I  should 
not  say  one  word  on  this  occasion ;  although,  if  what  is  now  proposed 
shall  be  accomplished,  I  know  not  what  would  have  been  the  value  of  such 
a  protest,  however  formally  or  carefully  it  might  have  been  inserted  in  the 
body  of  that  instrument.  But,  as  there  is  no  such  constitutional  privilege, 
36 


546  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXIII. 

I  can  only  effect  my  purpose  by  thus  addressing  the  Senate ;  and  I  rise, 
therefore,  to  make  that  protest  in  this  manner,  in  the  face  of  the  Senate, 
and  in  the  face  of  the  country,  which  I  cannot  present  in  any  other  form. 

"  I  speak  in  my  own  behalf,  and  in  behalf  of  my  colleague ;  we  both 
speak  as  Senators  from  the  State  of  Massachusetts,  and,  as  such,  we 
solemnly  protest  against  this  whole  proceeding. 

"  We  deny  that  Senators  from  any  other  States  have  power  or  authority 
to  expunge  any  vote  or  votes  which  we  have  given  here,  and  which  we 
have  recorded  agreeably  to  the  express  provision  of  the  Constitution.  We 
have  high  personal  interest,  and  the  State  whose  representatives  we  are 
has  also  a  high  interest,  in  the  preservation  entire  of  every  part  and  parcel 
of  the  record  of  our  conduct  as  members  of  the  Senate. 

"  This  record  the  Constitution  declares  shall  be  Tcept ;  but  the  resolu 
tion  before  the  Senate  declares  that  this  record  shall  be  expunged. 
Whether  subterfuge  and  evasion,  and,  as  it  appears  to  us,  the  degrading 
mockery  of  drawing  black  lines  upon  the  Journal,  shall  or  shall  not  leave 
our  names  and  our  votes  legible,  -when  this  violation  of  the  record  shall 
have  been  complete,  still  the  term  '  to  expunge,'  and  the  term  '  to  keep,' 
when  applied  to  a  record,  impart  ideas  exactly  contradictory  ;  as  much  so 
as  the  term  '  to  preserve,'  and  the  term  '  to  destroy.'  A  record  which  is 
expunged  is  not  a  record  which  is  kept,  any  more  than  a  record  which  is 
destroyed  can  be  a  record  which  is  preserved.  The  part  expunged  is  no 
longer  part  of  the  record ;  it  has  no  longer  a  legal  existence.  It  cannot 
be  certified  as  a  part  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Senate  for  any  purpose  of 
proof  or  evidence.  The  object  of  the  provision  in  the  Constitution,  as  we 
think,  most  obviously  is,  that  the  proceedings  of  the  Senate  shall  be  pre 
served  in  writing  not  for  the  present  only ;  not  until  published  only,  be 
cause  a  copy  of  the  printed  Journal  is  not  regular  legal  evidence ;  but  pre 
served  indefinitely ;  preserved,  as  other  records  are  preserved,  till  destroyed 
by  time  or  accident. 

"  Every  one  must  see  that  matters  of  the  highest  importance  depend 
on  the  permanent  preservation  of  the  Journals  of  the  two  Houses.  What 
but  the  Journals  show  that  bills  have  been  regularly  passed  into  laws, 
through  the  several  stages  ;  what  but  the  Journals  show  who  are  members, 
or  who  is  President,  or  Speaker,  or  Secretary,  or  Clerk  of  the  body  ?  What 
but  the  Journals  contain  the  proof  necessary  for  the  justification  of  those 
who  act  under  our  authority,  and  who,  without  the  power  of  producing 
such  proof,  must  stand  as  trespassers  ?  What  but  the  Journals  show  who 
is  appointed,  and  who  rejected,  by  us,  on  the  President's  nomination ;  or 
who  is  acquitted,  or  who  convicted  in  trials  on  impeachment  ?  In  short, 
is  there,  at  any  time,  any  other  regular  and  legal  proof,  of  any  act  done  by 
the  Senate,  than  the  Journal  itself? 

"  The  idea,  therefore,  that  the  Senate  is  bound  to  preserve  its  Journal 
only  until  it  is  published,  and  then  may  alter,  mutilate,  or  destroy  it  at 
pleasure,  appears  to  us  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  sentiments  ever  ad 
vanced.  We  feel  grateful  to  those  friends  who  have  shown,  with  so  much 


1837.]  THE  EXPUNGING  RESOLUTION.  547 

clearness,  that  all  the  precedents  relied  on  to  justify  or  to  excuse  this  pro 
ceeding  are  either  not  to  the  purpose,  or,  from  the  times  and  circum 
stances  at  and  under  which  they  happened,  are  in  no  way  entitled  to  re 
spect  in  a  free  government,  existing  under  a  written  Constitution.  But 
for  ourselves,  we  stand  on  the  plain  words  of  that  Constitution  itself.  A 
thousand  precedents  elsewhere  made,  whether  ancient  or  modern,  can 
neither  rescind,  nor  control,  nor  explain  away  these  words.  The  words 
are,  that l  each  House  shall  Iceep  a  Journal  of  its  proceedings.'  No  gloss, 
no  ingenuity,  no  specious  interpretation,  and  much  less  any  fair  or  just 
reasoning,  can  reconcile  the  process  of  expunging  with  the  plain  meaning 
of  these  words,  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  common-sense  and  honest  under 
standing  of  mankind.  If  the  Senate  may  now  expunge  one  part  of  the 
Journal  of  a  former  session,  it  may,  with  equal  authority,  expunge  another 
part,  or  the  whole.  It  may  expunge  the  entire  record  of  any  one  session, 
or  of  all  sessions. 

"  It  seems  to  us  inconceivable  how  any  men  can  regard  such  a  power, 
and  its  exercise  at  pleasure,  as  consistent  with  the  injunctions  of  the  Con 
stitution.  It  makes  no  difference  what  is  the  completeness  or  incomplete 
ness  of  the  act  of  expunging,  or  by  what  means  done ;  whether  by  erasure, 
obliteration,  or  defacement ;  if  by  defacement,  as  here  proposed,  whether 
one  word  or  many  words  are  written  on  the  face  of  the  record ;  whether 
little  ink  or  much  ink  is  shed  on  the  paper ;  or  whether  some  part,  or  the 
whole,  of  the  original  written  Journal  may  yet  by  possibility  be  traced.  If 
the  act  done  be  an  act  to  expunge,  to  blot  out,  to  obliterate,  to  erase  the 
record,  then  the  record  is  expunged,  blotted  out,  obliterated,  and  erased. 
And  mutilation  and  alteration  violate  the  record  as  much  as  obliteration 
or  erasure.  A  record,  subsequently  altered,  is  not  the  original  record.  It 
no  longer  gives  a  just  account  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Senate.  It  is  no 
longer  true.  It  is,  in  short,  no  Journal  of  the  real  and  actual  proceedings 
of  the  Senate,  such  as  the  Constitution  says  each  House  shall  keep. 

"  The  Constitution,  therefore,  is,  in  our  deliberate  judgment,  violated 
by  this  proceeding,  in  the  most  plain  and  open  manner. 

"  The  Constitution,  moreover,  provides  that  the  yeas  and  nays,  on  any 
question,  shall,  at  the  request  of  one-fifth  of  the  members  present,  be  en 
tered  on  the  Journal.  This  provision  most  manifestly  gives  a  personal 
right,  to  those  members  who  may  demand  it,  to  the  entry  and  preservation 
of  their  votes  on  the  record  of  the  proceedings  of  the  body  not  for  one  day 
or  one  year  only,  but  for  all  time.  There  the  yeas  and  nays  are  to  stand 
forever,  as  permanent  and  lasting  proof  of  the  manner  in  which  members 
have  voted  on  great  questions  before  them.  But  it  is  now  insisted  that 
the  votes  of  members  taken  by  yeas  and  nays,  and  thus  entered  on  the 
Journal,  as  a  matter  of  right,  may  still  be  expunged,  so  that  that,  which  it 
required  more  than  fourth-fifths  of  the  Senators  to  prevent  from  being  put 
on  the  Journal,  may,  nevertheless,  be  struck  off,  and  erased  the  next  mo 
ment,  or  at  any  period  afterward,  by  the  will  of  a  mere  majority ;  or,  if 
this  be  denied,  then  the  absurdity  is  adopted  of  maintaining  that  this  pro- 


548  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 

vision  of  the  Constitution  is  fulfilled  by  merely  preserving  the  yeas  and 
nays  on  the  Journal,  after  having  expunged  and  obliterated  the  very  reso 
lution,  or  the  very  question,  on  which  they  were  given,  and  to  which  alone 
they  refer ;  leaving  the  yeas  and  nays  thus  a  mere  list  of  names,  connected 
with  no  subject,  no  question,  no  vote.  We  put  it  to  the  impartial  judg 
ment  of  mankind,  if  these  proceedings  be  not  in  this  respect  also  directly 
and  palpably  inconsistent  with  the  Constitution. 

"  We  protest  in  the  most  solemn  manner  that  other  Senators  have  no 
authority  to  deprive  us  of  our  personal  rights,  secured  to  us  by  the  Con 
stitution,  either  by  expunging,  or  obliterating,  or  mutilating,  or  defacing 
the  record  of  our  votes,  duly  entered  by  yeas  and  neas ;  or  by  expunging 
and  obliterating  the  resolutions  or  questions  on  which  these  votes  were 
given  and  recorded. 

"We  have  seen,  with  deep  and  sincere  pain,  the  Legislatures  of  re 
spectable  States  instructing  the  Senators  of  those  States  to  vote  for  and 
support  this  violation  of  the  Journal  of  the  Senate;  and  this  pain  is 
infinitely  increased  by  our  full  belief  and  entire  conviction  that  most  if 
not  all  these  proceedings  of  States  had  their  origin  in  promptings  from 
Washington ;  that  they  have  been  urgently  requested  and  insisted  on,  as 
being  necessary  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  intended  purpose ;  and  that 
it  is  nothing  else  bnt  the  influence  and  power  of  the  Executive  branch  of 
this  Government  which  has  brought  the  Legislatures  of  so  many  of  the 
free  States  of  this  Union  to  quit  the  sphere  of  their  ordinary  duties,  for 
the  purpose  of  cooperating  to  accomplish  a  measure,  in  our  judgment,  so 
unconstitutional,  so  derogatory  to  the  character  of  the  Senate,  and  marked 
with  so  broad  an  impression  of  compliance  with  power. 

"  But  this  resolution  is  to  pass.  We  expect  it.  That  cause  which  has 
been  powerful  enough  to  influence  so  many  State  Legislatures  will  show 
itself  powerful  enough,  especially  with  such  aids,  to  secure  the  passage  of 
the  resolution  here. 

"  We  make  up  our  minds  to  behold  the  spectacle  which  is  to  ensue.  We 
collect  ourselves  to  look  on  in  silence,  while  a  scene  is  exhibited  which,  if 
we  did  not  regard  it  as  a  ruthless  violation  of  a  sacred  instrument,  would 
appear  to  us  to  be  little  elevated  above  the  character  of  a  contemptible 
farce.  This  scene  we  shall  behold,  and  hundreds  of  American  citizens,  as 
many  as  may  crowd  into  these  lobbies  and  galleries,  will  behold  it  also ; 
with  what  feelings  I  do  not  undertake  to  say. 

"  But  we  protest,  we  most  solemnly  protest,  against  the  substance  and 
against  the  manner  of  this  proceeding ;  against  its  object,  against  its  form, 
and  against  its  effect.  We  tell  you  that  you  have  no  right  to  mar  or  mutilate 
the  record  of  our  votes  given  here,  and  recorded  according  to  the  Con 
stitution  ;  we  tell  you  that  you  may  as  well  erase  the  yeas  and  nays  on  any 
other  question  or  resolution,  or  on  all  questions  and  resolutions,  as  on  this ; 
we  tell  you  that  you  have  just  as  much  right  to  falsify  the  record,  by  so 
altering  it  as  to  make  us  appear  to  have  voted  on  any  question  as  we  did 
not  vote,  as  you  have  to  erase  a  record,  and  make  that  page  a  blank  in 


1837.]  SLAVERY  IN  THE  DISTRICT  OF  COLUMBIA.  549 

our  votes,  as  they  were  actually  given  and  recorded,  now  stand.  The  one 
proceeding,  as  it  appears  to  us,  is  as  much  a  falsification  of  the  record  as 
the  other. 

"  Having  made  this  Protest,  our  duty  is  performed.  We  rescue  our 
own  names,  character,  and  honor  from  all  participation  in  this  matter ;  and 
whatever  the  wayward  character  of  the  times,  the  headlong  and  plunging 
spirit  of  party  devotion,  or  the  fear  or  the  love  of  power,  may  have  been 
able  to  bring  about  elsewhere,  we  desire  to  thank  God  that  they  have  not, 
as  yet,  overcome  the  love  of  liberty,  fidelity  to  true  republican  principles, 
and  a  sacred  regard  for  the  Constitution,  in  that  State  whose  soil  was 
drenched  to  a  mire  by  the  first  and  best  blood  of  the  Revolution.  Massa 
chusetts,  as  yet,  has  not  been  conquered ;  and,  while  we  have  the  honor  to 
hold  seats  here  as  her  Senators,  we  shall  never  consent  to  the  sacrifice 
either  of  her  rights  or  our  own ;  we  shall  never  fail  to  oppose  what  we 
regard  as  a  plain  and  open  violation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  country ; 
and  we  should  have  thought  ourselves  wholly  unworthy  of  her  if  we  had 
not,  with  all  the  solemnity  and  earnestness  in  our  power,  protested  against 
the  adoption  of  the  resolution  now  before  the  Senate." 

The  reception  of  petitions  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia  was  again  the  subject  of  an  excited  discus 
sion  at  this  session.  The  former  action  of  the  Senate,  in  re 
fusing  to  give  such  petitions  a  hearing,  had  greatly  increased 
their  number.  They  now  came  from  many  quarters  of  the 
country  from  which  they  had  not  come  before ;  and  it  was  ap 
parent  to  most  persons  that  the  refusal  to  hear  and  to  make  a 
report  on  these  petitions  was  the  principal  cause  of  the  inunda 
tion  that  now  came  upon  the  Senate.  On  the  6th  of  February 
a  great  many  of  them  were  presented,  and  among  them  were 
some  that  had  been  sent  to  Mr.  Webster.  In  presenting  them, 
he  repeated  the  opinions  that  he  had  expressed  at  the  last  session, 
especially  in  regard  to  the  duty  of  the  Senate  to  refer  them,  not 
only  because  this  was  a  right  which  the  petitioners  could  de 
mand,  but  because  it  was  wise  to  admit  that  right.  At  the 
same  time,  he  declared  that  he  meant  to  express  no  opinion 
on  the  expediency  of  legislating  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  the  District,  a  subject  which  he  thought  ought  to  be  dis 
cussed  by  those  who  were  most  concerned  in  it. 

But  the  representatives  of  the  slaveholding  States  were  now 
greatly  excited,  and  thoroughly  averse  to  any  consideration  of 
a  petition  which  touched  the  institution  of  slavery  in  any  of  its 
aspects.  Mr.  Calhoun,  who  thought  that  the  door  ought  to  be 


550  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXIII. 

peremptorily  shut,  obtained  a  ruling  from  the  Chair,1  that  any 
objection  made  to  the  reception  of  a  petition  raised  the  ques 
tion  of  reception,  without  a  motion  not  to  receive.  As  these 
petitions  were  successively  presented,  objections  were  made,  and 
the  question  being  stated  on  the  reception,  a  motion  to  lay  this 
question  on  the  table  carried  the  petition  with  it.  In  this  way 
a  large  majority  of  the  Senate  thought  fit  to  avoid  a  direct  vote 
on  the  reception  and  reference  of  the  petitions — a  course  which 
was  as  little  adapted  to  allay  the  agitation  then  rising  as  the 
former  rejection  of  the  prayer  of  the  petitions.8  It  was  very 
apparent  to  Mr.  Webster  that  the  Senate  would  have  to  recede 
from  this  position,  or  to  take  another  and  further  step  in  the 
wrong  direction ;  and  that,  if  it  did  the  latter,  an  irretrievable 
error  would  be  committed.  What  occurred  in  the  next  session 
will  disclose  the  grounds  of  this  opinion. 

But,  in  the  midst  of  this  busy  and  important  session,  his 
thoughts  were  often  away  at  "  Green  Harbor,"  with  the 
"  Thomases,"  with  his  fields,  his  cattle,  his  loads  of  "  kelp,"  and 
his  crops.  Besides  the  original  homestead  of  the  Thomas  family, 
he  had,  ere  this,  become  the  owner  of  several  other  properties, 
adjoining  or  near,  and  he  had  for  several  years  been  a  system 
atic,  although,  it  must  be  owned,  a  very  expensive,  farmer.  The 
"temptations"  to  which  he  alludes  in  the  following  letter  must 
not  be  ascribed  to  political  aspirations.  He  was  at  this  time 
meditating  a  dim  project  of  a  great  farm  in  the  "West,  and  a 
retirement  to  it  from  professional  and  public  life — a  phantom 
of  his  brain  that  will  reappear  hereafter.  But  the  truth  un 
doubtedly  is,  that  Marshfield  owed  its  power  to  retain  him, 
whenever  he  balanced  its  poorer  soil  against  the  richness  of  the 
prairies,  to  the  attractions  of  the  sea,  and  to  the  local  associa 
tions  with  which  that  old  "Pilgrim "  region  is  filled.  It  is  the 
neighborhood  over  which  the  company  of  the  Mayflower  and 
their  immediate  descendants  first  spread  themselves,  and  their 
names,  their  lands,  and  their  graves,  are  everywhere  around. 
His  own  blood  was  not  immediately  of  theirs,  but  he  was  of  a 
kindred  stock,  and  his  feelings  were  always  strongly  moved  by 
the  traditions  that  clung  to  the  soil  where  the  sturdy  Puritans 

1  Mr.  King,  of  Alabama,  President  of  2  Mr.Webster,  of  course,  voted  against 

the  Senate  pro  tempore.  this  method  of  action. 


1837.]  DOIXGS  AT  MARSHFIELD.  551 

"  drove  their  teams  afield,"  where  they  founded  the  early  insti 
tutions  of  ~NQW  England,  and  where,  "  each  in  his  narrow  cell 
forever  laid,"  their  simple  monuments  carried  back  public  and 
private  history  to  the  infancy  of  the  nation : 


[TO   CHAS.    H.   THOMAS,  ESQ.] 

"  "WASHINGTON,  February  4, 1837. 

"  DEAR  HENRY  :  Although  I  have  no  letter  from  you  either  yesterday 
or  to-day,  I  must  still  commend  your  improved  habits.  You  have  certainly 
whipped  up  your  spirit  of  letter-writing  to  new  speed,  so  that  I  get  two 
letters  a  week,  at  least.  This  is  very  pleasing.  There  have  been  times, 
since  I  saw  you  last,  when  I  have  doubted  whether  Marshfield  and  I  could 
hold  on  together  to  the  end  of  my  life.  I  have  felt  in  those  moments  as  a 
humility  looks  when  she  spreads  out  her  wings  for  flight.  Even  now  some 
things  are  unsettled  in  my  brain.  I  keep  them,  however,  to  myself,  and, 
except  you  and  one  other,  who  has  received  a  slight  hint,  nobody  knows 
of  the  existence  of  any  such  notions.  There  are  temptations,  which,  if 
Marshfield  were  not  what  it  is,  or  if  it  were  to  cease  to  be  what  it  has  been, 
might  induce  me  to  look  upon  the  last  seven  or  eight  years  as  a  bright  spot, 
in  the  journey  of  life,  which  I  had  passed  through.  All  these  things,  how 
ever,  are  to  be  buried  in  the  depth  of  your  faithful  bosom.  And,  in  the 
mean  time,  I  must  say  that  even  your  slightest  letters  afford  me  pleasure. 
Amidst  the  toil  of  law  and  the  stunning  din  of  politics,  any  thing  is  wel 
come  which  calls  my  thoughts  back  to  Marshfield,  though  it  be  only  to  be 
told  which  way  the  wind  blows.  I  am  suffering  from  a  cold,  and  for  two 
days  have  not  been  out  of  my  room.  Last  night  I  was  dreaming  of  you 
all  night,  which  I  hope  you  will  consider  as  a  very  great  compliment.  My 
letters  from  Boston  all  speak  of  your  mother.  She  seems  to  have  made 
quite  a  sensation  in  Summer  Street.  Captain  John  Thomas  will  find  it 
necessary  to  put  his  best  foot  forward  when  he  goes  to  Boston,  if  he  does 
not  mean  to  have  the  shine  taken  off  of  himself  by  his  spouse. 

"  In  regard  to  farming  matters,  you  appear  to  be  doing  well.  Some  of 
your  kelp-drawing  days  have  showed  great  results.  If  I  have  kept  the 
account  right,  you  have  probably  secured  as  much  kelp  as  will  be  a  decent 
dressing  for  all  the  corn-land  you  prepared  to  plant  at  Careswell.  By-the- 
way,  let  us  settle  names.  I  am  tired  of  the  'Soule  Place,'  and  the 
*  Sprague  Place,'  and  the  *  Widow  Winslow's  Thirds,'  and  so  many  other 
names.  Let  us  use  some  names  uniformly,  and  we  shall  save  time  and 
breath.  According  to  the  proposed  plans  (which  I  hope  are  made),  there 
are  three  places : 

"  1.  The  homestead — that  is,  'Green  Harbor;'  and  any  man  must  be 
indicted  for  slander  who  gives  it  any  other  name.1 

1  This  was  the  place  bought  of  Captain  Thomas. 


552  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXIII. 

"  2.  Those  parcels  which  we  have  set  apart  for  a  mulberry  farm.  This 
may  be  called  '  The  Mulberry  Farm,'  or  it  may  be  called  '  Winslow  Place,' 
without  the  '  the,'  or  *  Pelham  Place,'  Pelham  being  a  distinguished  name 
in  the  pedigree  of  the  Winslow  family.1 

"  3.  The  Soule  place — that  is  to  say,  the  house  and  land  bought  of  Mr. 
Soule,  and  what  we  have  attached  to  it  from  the  Sprague  purchase — may 
be  called  '  Careswell,'  which  I  do  [not]  much  like,  or  *  The  Summer  Farm,' 
which  I  like  better,  or  the  '  Cottage  Farm,'  when  we  take  down  the  big 
house.2 

"  Consult  Captain  John  Thomas  and  Lucy,  his  wife,  on  these  matters. 
Let  me  know  what  they  and  you  and  Edward 8  think,  and  we  will  give 
these  places  fixed  names,  and  anybody  who  miscalls  them  is  not  to  be  an 
swered  when  he  speaks  to  us.  Was  Careswell  the  name  of  the  Winslow 
property  generally,  or  did  it  apply  only  to  a  part  of  it  ?  Ask  your  mother 
to  explain  and  expound.  And  now  to  return  to  the  kelp.4  I  suppose  the 
season  may  be  pretty  nearly  over  for  it,  but  if  it  continue  to  come,  you  will 
be  ready  to  seize  it,  and  know  what  to  do  with  it.  When  John  Taylor 
comes  down  next  August  or  September,  I  want  him  to  lose  himself  in  our 
cornfields.5  I  am  thinking  of  using  lime  freely  at  Green  Harbor,  but  this 
will  depend  on  the  cost.  I  understand  it  can  often  be  had  at  less  than  a 
dollar  a  cask  at  Thomaston — sometimes  lower  than  eighty  cents.  A  cask 
is  five  bushels  of  unslacked  lime.  Of  course,  when  slacked,  there  will  be 
ten.  Suppose  the  price  a  dollar  a  cask,  the  slacked  lime  would  be  ten 
cents  per  bushel,  or  equal  to  that,  at  the  quarry.  Now,  what  is  the  freight 
worth  for  a  vessel  to  go  direct,  and  to  bring  her  cargo  to  the  mouth  of 
Green  Harbor  Kiver  ?  This,  as  well  as  the  actual  price  at  Thomaston,  you 
can  readily  ascertain.  Please  make  inquiries,  and  let  me  know.  The 
Thomaston  lime  is  a  good  deal  stronger  than  the  Pennsylvania  lime,  and 
yet,  in  the  best  counties  of  Pennsylvania,  they  will  pay  twelve  or  fifteen 
cents  a  bushel  for  lime,  and  haul  it  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  miles,  for  corn, 
clover,  and  wheat.  Think  of  these  things,  and  count  the  cost.  If  I  had 
lime,  in  addition  to  using  it  with  mud  and  other  matter,  I  should  use  it  by 
itself,  thus :  I  should  spread  it,  thirty  or  forty  bushels  to  the  acre,  on  old 
sward-land,  like  Stoughton  Island,  on  the  old  orchard,  or  the  sheep-pas- 

1  This  farm,  with  a  very  old  Puritan  This  was  one  of  the  local  distinctions 
house,  had  become  the  property  of  Mr.  which  were  always   conceded   to    him. 
Webster.  Porter  Wright,  who  was  his  "foreman" 

2  This  place  Mr.  Webster  finally  called  at  Marshfield  for  many  years,  in  giving 
"  Careswell."     He  built  a  cottage-house  his  recollections  of  Mr.  Webster,  after 
upon  it,  which  was  occupied  by  his  son  his  death,  said,  with  delightful  naivete, 
Fletcher  as  a  summer  residence.     It  is  "Nobody  had  ever  used  munhaden  or 
about  one    mile   distant  from   "  Green  kelp  in  this  part  of  the  country ;  he 
Harbor."  started  both." 

3  His   second   son,  afterward   Major          5  John  Taylor,  one  of  the  best  speci- 
Webster.  mens  of   the    New-England    yeomanry, 

4  Mr.  Webster  enjoyed  the  glory  of  was  Mr.  Webster's  farmer  and  factotum 
being  the  first  farmer  on  that  coast  to  at  Franklin.    It  must  have  been  tall  corn 
use  "  kelp,"  or  sea-weed,  as  a  manure,  for  this  man  to  lose  himself  in. 


1837.]  DOINGS  AT  MARSHFIELD.  553 

ture ;  plough  it  in,  and  plant  the  land  with  corn,  potatoes,  beans,  or  some 
other  crop  requiring  the  hoe,  according  to  the  natural  strength  of  the  land. 
The  hoeing  mixes  the  lime  with  the  land,  so  that  it  affects  the  whole  soil. 
On  such  land  as  the  sheep-pasture,  I  should  spread  twenty-five  bushels  of 
unslacked  lime  to  the  acre ;  and  on  such  light  land  I  think  I  should  plant 
beans.  The  next  year  apply  manure  from  the  barn-yard  as  plentifully  as 
possible,  get  a  crop  of  oats,  and  put  in  grass-seed.  Field  turnips  would 
do  well,  instead  of  oats,  or  part  might  be  put  into  each.  On  strong,  clayey 
land,  I  should  plant  corn  or  potatoes.  Ponder  these  matters.1 

"  We  have  made  some  mistakes,  but  must  hope  to  grow  wiser.  Never 
again  sow  small  grains  on  long  manure.  Put  that  down  as  one  maxim.  If 
I  live,  and  am  well,  I  must  go  home,  either  in  March  or  the  early  part  of 
April.  Either  time  will  be  in  season  to  settle  some  things.  If  I  should  be 
in  Marshfield  in  March,  I  should  expect  to  drive  the  team  once  off  the 
beach  with  a  load  of  kelp.  The  oxen  which  you  destine  for  beef  next  fall 
you  will,  of  course,  ease  off  from  their  work  so  soon  as  you  can,  when  the 
business  of  kelp  is  over.  How  many,  and  which  is  it  best  to  turn  out  ? 
1.  There  are  the  old  oxen,  they  must  be  fatted,  of  course.  2.  The  off  oxen, 
bought  of  Captain  Stevens  (I  wish  we  had  the  black  ram  to  go  with  them), 
if  not  sold,  these  must  be  fatted.  3.  Then  there  are  the  Princeton  oxen, 
which  are  quite  old  enough  to  fat  well.  Now,  I  do  not  see  how  we  are 
going  to  sell  any  thing,  unless  it  be  stock,  and  we  must  contrive  to  sell 
something,  or  we  shall  all  be  called  on  to  make  an  assignment.  These  off 
oxen,  I  think,  will  make  good  beef,  for  Captain  John  Thomas  and  his  wife 
Lucy,  and  for  me  and  wife  Caroline.  Suppose,  therefore,  we  devote  them 
to  the  captain's  *  powdering  tub,'  together  with  any  other  similar  likely 
thing  which  John  Taylor  may  happen  to  send  down  next  fall  ?  And  then, 
suppose  we  fat  the  old  oxen  and  the  Princeton  oxen  for  the  market,  loosing 
them  from  the  yoke  as  early  as  we  can,  keeping  them  as  well  as  we  can 
through  the  summer,  and  keeping  them  on  roots  in  the  fall  and  winter, 
until  they  are  fat  enough  to  make  people  at  Brighton  '  open  their  eyes,'  as 
Captain  Thomas  would  say  ?  All  these  things  you  must  weigh.  I  don't 
mean  you  must  weigh  the  oxen;  they  are  too  poor  yet,  but  weigh  these 
hints.  But  I  must  stop  from  these  interesting  topics,  and  pursue  them  no 
further.  You  owe  the  trouble  of  reading  this  long  letter  to  my  being  un 
able,  from  my  cold,  to  go  either  to  the  court  or  Senate,  and  to  my  having 
positively  forbidden  Charles  to  let  any  one  in  this  day.  I  am  tired,  too,  of 
reading,  and  so  have  run  on  with  this  incoherent  scribbling.  There  is 
another  matter  on  which  I  may  write  you  in  a  few  days ;  but,  if  I  am  well 

1  This  reminds  us  of  Burke,  who,  like  the  crop  is  very  large,  and  the  carrots,  though 

Mr.  Webster,  was  a  practical  farmer,  and  ^SffSOSt  SSfSSSfSSSf, 

equally  fond  of  the  details  of  his  work  :  a  most  aromatic  smell,  firm  and  admirably 

tasted.    I  have  sent  two  wagon-loads  to  Lon- 

"  BECONSFIKLD,  October  21, 1770.  &on^  for  which  I  had  six  pounds,  fifteen.    The 

..."  Last  year  I  sowed  two  acres  with  back-carriage   of   coal-ashes   has   paid  my 

the  same  seed.  ...  In  the  summer  they  were  charges."— {Correspondence  of  the  Eight  Hon. 

twice  hand-hoed,  I  fear  not  sufficiently,  but  Edmund  Burke,  i.,  246.    London:  1844.) 


554  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 

enough  to  go  out  to-morrow,  I  shall  have  no  more  leisure  to  trouble  you 
with  a  long  letter  for  some  time.  Meanwhile,  I  hope  you  will  not  fail  to 
write  as  often  as  you  can.  Give  my  best  regards  to  your  wife,  and  to  Ann 
and  the  doctor,  and  to  your  father  and  mother,  and  my  love  to  Edward. 
I  suppose  you  all  receive  Charles's  communications  in  sufficient  abundance. 
Adieu !  my  good  friend. 

"  DANL.  WEBSTEK." 

Before  this  letter  was  written,  however,  he  had  determined 
to  resign  his  seat  in  the  Senate,  and,  at  the  end  of  January,  he 
dispatched  letters  to  Massachusetts,  making  known  this  pur 
pose,  in  order  that  the  Legislature  might  appoint  his  successor. 
His  friends  in  Boston  at  once  manifested  their  opposition  to 
this  step.  In  the  city  of  New  York  the  intelligence  was  re 
ceived  with  no  less  concern.  A  meeting  of  his  political  friends 
was  held  on  the  21st  of  February,  at  which  Chancellor  Kent 
presided,  and  which  was  attended  by  many  of  the  principal  per 
sons  in  the  city,  for  the  purpose  of  inviting  him  to  a  public 
reception.  If  he  was  to  resign,  these  gentlemen  desired  to 
mark  their  sense  of  his  public  services ;  and  if  his  purposes 
might  be  modified  by  the  wishes  of  a  great  body  of  citizens  in 
the  commercial  metropolis  of  the  country,  they  desired  to  pre 
sent  those  wishes  to  him  in  the  most  imposing  form  in  which 
they  could  be  expressed.  It  was  certainly  a  striking  proof  how 
entirely  he  belonged  to  the  country,  and  how  widely  his  im 
portance  was  felt  beyond  the  limits  of  the  State  which  he  rep 
resented,  that  the  rumor  of  his  intended  resignation  should  have 
called  forth  such  a  demonstration  as  this.  It  was  without  pre 
cedent  in  the  case  of  any  man  who  had  ever  held  a  seat  in  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States ;  nor  has  it  ever  been  since  repeated 
in  any  other  case.  Even  if  we  were  now  to  regard  it  merely 
as  the  expression  of  a  party  to  one  of  its  great  leaders,  its  sig 
nificance  is  scarcely  diminished.  But  it  was  not  a  mere  party 
movement.  It  was  his  relation  to  the  Constitution,  his  rela 
tion  to  the  whole  country,  his  extensive  knowledge  of  public 
affairs,  and  his  unwavering  devotion  to  the  Union,  that  led  a 
body  of  men,  who  were  not  his  constituents,  to  endeavor  to  in 
fluence,  as  far  as  they  might  with  decorum  undertake  to  influ 
ence,  the  course  of  his  life.  If  such  expressions  induced  further 
sacrifices  of  private  convenience,  if  they  postponed,  as  they  did, 


1837.]  PUBLIC  RECEPTION  IN  NEW  YORK.  555 

again  and  again,  the  day  for  securing  Ms  personal  fortunes  until 
"  a  life  devoted  to  the  public  service  "  became  his  unchangeable 
"  destiny,"  we  are  to  remember  how  earnestly  and  impressively 
he  was  appealed  to,  and  how  little  he  was  left  to  regard  his  own 
personal  interests,  when  they  were  to  be  weighed  in  the  balance 
against  the  interests  of  the  country. 

"When  the  invitation  to  a  public  reception  in  New  York  was 
about  to  be  sent  to  him  at  Washington,  he  was  in  correspond 
ence  with  his  friends  in  Massachusetts  on  the  subject  of  his 
resignation.  The  Legislature  of  the  State  was  then  in  session, 
and  it  was  his  own  opinion,  and  that  of  his  friends  in  Wash 
ington,  that  the  vacancy  ought  to  be  filled  before  its  adjourn 
ment.  He  had  important  private  interests  in  the  West,  con 
nected  with  purchases  of  land  which  he  had  made  in  that 
region ;  and,  without  any  political  object,  he  desired  to  travel 
in  his  own  country  more  extensively  than  he  had  hitherto  done. 
Nor  had  he  ever  been  in  Europe.  England,  at  least,  he  desired 
to  see,  and  the  desire  to  see  him  was  not  confined  to  the  few 
Englishmen  whom  he  had  known  here,  although  their  letters  to 
him  constantly  looked  forward  to  the  time  when  they  might 
welcome  him  among  them.  All  this,  it  seemed  to  him,  could 
not  be  accomplished  without  some  interval  of  uninterrupted 
attention  to  his  private  affairs.  He  expressed  his  willingness 
to  return  to  the  Senate  at  some  future  time,  if  that  should  be 
the  wish  of  his  constituents.  But  they  were  unwilling  to  re 
ceive  his  resignation,  even  on  this  understanding.  A  committee 
of  the  Whigs  of  the  Legislature,  with  their  Speaker,  the  Hon. 
Robert  C.  Winthrop,  at  the  head  of  it,  sent  him  a  formal  re 
quest  to  withdraw  his  resignation,  or,  at  least,  to  postpone  it 
for  the  present.  To  this  an  overwhelming  number  of  private 
wishes  were  added ;  so  that  when  the  New- York  invitation  was 
ready  to  be  sent  to  him,  and  he  was  informally  apprised  of  its 
tenor,  nothing  had  been  left  for  him  to  do  but  to  signify  his 
consent  to  hold  the  seat  until  the  next  meeting  of  the  Legis 
lature. 

The  public  correspondence  in  relation  to  the  proposed  cere 
mony  in  New  York  is  contained  in  the  first  volume  of  Mr. 
Webster's  Works.  The  following  private  letter  respecting  the 
arrangements  has  been  hitherto  unpublished : 


556  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 

[TO   PHILIP   HONE,   ESQ.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  March  5, 1837. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  had  the  pleasure  to  receive  Mr.  Ogden's  communi 
cation,  referred  to  in  your  letter  of  the  3d  instant,  and  have  made  an  an 
swer  to  that  communication,  expressing,  not  half  as  fully  as  I  feel,  the 
honor  conferred  on  me  by  this  tender  of  respect  and  hospitality,  made  by 
political  friends  in  New  York. 

"  Such  marks  of  approbation  cannot  but  be  gratefully  received;  and  I 
have  signified  to  Mr.  Ogden  the  pleasure  it  will  give  me  to  meet  these,  and 
other  friends,  in  the  manner  most  acceptable  to  them. 

"  In  answer  to  your  inquiry  as  to  the  day  of  my  arrival  in  New  York,  I 
have  to  say  that  I  have  not  fixed  on  any  day,  and  that  such  day  may  be 
named  as  may  best  suit  the  convenience  of  the  committee,  and  of  others. 
I  shall  be  in  Philadelphia  on  Thursday  or  Friday  next,  and  shall  be  ready, 
I  presume,  to  proceed  to  New  York  on  Monday,  the  13th.  Tuesday,  the 
14th,  or  any  day  later  than  that,  would,  therefore,  suit  me.  I  can  be  at 
Jersey  City  Tuesday  or  Wednesday,  or  Thursday  evening,  as  you  may  find 
most  convenient,  but  rather  preferring,  myself,  that  it  should  not  be  later 
than  Wednesday. 

"  I  desire  the  committee  to  consult  their  own  feelings  and  wishes,  and 
not  mine,  in  all  things  respecting  the  manner  and  forms  of  proceeding.  It 
would  be  perfectly  agreeable  to  me  to  dispense  with  all  ceremony  of  recep 
tion,  and  to  meet  my  friends  after  my  arrival,  in  the  ordinary  way,  in  the 
city.  But  I  leave  all  this  in  the  discretion  of  others.  You  will  have  the 
kindness  to  write  me,  in  Philadelphia,  as  soon  as  may  be  convenient,  and 
to  name  day,  and  hour,  and  place,  at  which  I  may  expect  the  honor  of 
meeting  with  the  committee. 

"  I  must  not  close  this  short  letter,  my  dear  sir,  without  expressing  the 
pleasure  it  gives  me  to  receive  expressions  of  your  personal  friendship  and 
regard.  Be  assured,  I  reciprocate  these  sentiments,  and  cordially  offer  you 
renewed  declarations  of  esteem  and  the  most  sincere  good  wishes. 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

"  Philip  Hone,  Esq." 

On  the  15th  of  March  the  committee  attended  Mr.  Webster 
at  Amboy,  and  escorted  him  to  the  city ;  and  in  the  evening  he 
met  a  great  assemblage  of  the  people  at  Niblo's  Saloon.  The 
speech  which  he  delivered  on  this  occasion  forms  one  of  the 
chief  landmarks  in  his  political  career,  on  account  of  the  past, 
present,  and  future  relations  of  the  topics  of  which  he  treated, 
and  the  opinions  which  he  expressed.  He  was  at  this  time  in 
his  fifty-sixth  year.  It  was  very  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century 
since  he  first  entered  Congress,  and  he  had  been  fourteen  years 


1837.]  SPEECH  AT  NIBLO'S  SALOON.  557 

uninterruptedly  engaged  in  public  life.  The  Administration  of 
General  Jackson  had  just  closed,  through  the  whole  of  which, 
excepting  in  relation  to  the  subject  of  "  nullification,"  Mr.  Web 
ster  had  strenuously  opposed  the  measures  of  the  Executive.  It 
was  to  be  expected,  therefore,  that  he  would  review  the  meas 
ures  of  that  Administration;  for  the  crisis  which  it  was  ap 
parent  that  these  measures  had  prepared  for  the  country  was 
upon  it,  and  Mr.  Webster  owed  it  to  himself  to  make  it  plain 
that  his  opposition  had  been  founded  in  correct  motives,  and 
upon  sound  principles.  The  condition  of  affairs  which  I  have 
described  as  existing  during  the  past  year  remained  substan 
tially  unchanged.  The  "  Specie  Circular  "  was  still  in  opera 
tion,  drawing  the  gold  and  silver  of  the  country  into  the  land- 
offices,  and  thence  into  the  deposit  banks,  where  it  took  the 
form  of  a  debt  to  the  Government,  thus  converting  its  revenues 
into  bank  credits.  The  seventy-five  or  eighty  millions  of  specie 
in  the  country  neither  went  abroad  to  pay  the  balance  against 
us  in  foreign  hands,  nor  was  it  so  disposed  of  at  home  as  to 
sustain  the  paper  currency,  the  volume  of  which  was  increasing 
every  day,  without  any  regulator  to  control  it.  Besides  that 
portion  of  the  specie  which  was  locked  up  from  free  circulation 
by  the  operation  of  the  Treasury  circular,  large  amounts  had 
begun  to  be  hoarded  in  private  hands.  Mr.  Webster  saw  that 
an  explosion  must  ensue,  and  that  it  could  not  be  far  off.  He 
was,  therefore,  in  this  public  address,  to  trace  the  causes  that 
had  brought  about  this  state  of  things,  and  to  point  out  to  the 
public  intelligence  the  little  that  could  then  be  done  toward 
arresting  the  catastrophe. 

His  review  of  General  Jackson's  measures  relating  to  the 
currency,  commencing  from  his  first  inauguration  as  President, 
was  searching,  but  personally  respectful.  He  spoke  of  the  late 
President  as  a  man  who  had  done  the  country  great  service  in 
the  field ;  but  whose  usurpations  of  executive  power,  while  ad 
ministering  the  Government  as  President,  had  resulted  in  a 
total  derangement  of  the  currency  and  the  business  of  the  com 
munity.  That  this  was  a  true  description  of  the  case,  every  one 
can  now  see  who  will  look  back  to  the  year  1832,  and  will 
consider  that,  from  that  time  down  to  the  moment  when  Mr. 
Webster  delivered  this  speech,  in  the  spring  of  1837,  Con- 


558  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXIII. 

gress  had  done  nothing,  and  would  do  nothing,  effectually  to 
resist  the  control  which  the  Executive  had  assumed  over  the 
currency.  In  1832  the  President  vetoed  the  bill  continuing 
the  bank,  and  Congress  would  not  pass  it  over  the  veto.  In 
1833  the  President  removed  the  public  deposits  from  the  bank, 
and,  although  Congress  would  not  have  voted  for  this  measure, 
it  would  not  direct  their  restoration.  The  Executive  selected 
the  State  banks  that  were  to  take  the  place  of  the  national  in 
stitution  ;  prescribed  their  duties,  and  committed  to  them  the 
whole  proceeds  of  the  public  revenues;  acting  all  the  while 
without  any  legislation  or  rightful  authority  on  the  subject.  It 
was  not  until  July,  1836,  that  Congress  interfered  at  all  to  place 
the  deposit  banks  under  the  regulation  of  law,  and  securing 
them  against  executive  favoritism.  But,  in  the  mean  time,  great 
mischiefs  had  ensued.  The  public  money,  constantly  accumu 
lating  beyond  the  wants  of  the  Government,  had  become  the 
means  of  speculation ;  banking  capital  and  bank  paper  had 
vastly  increased ;  there  was  no  check  on  the  paper  circulation, 
and  nothing  to  produce  uniformity  in  its  credit,  and  to  sustain 
confidence  in  its  security.  As  a  means  of  effecting  some  dimi 
nution  of  these  tendencies,  Congress,  in  1836,  ordered  the  sur 
plus  in  the  Treasury  to  be  distributed  to  the  States.  But  now 
came  in  the  Treasury  circular,  ordering  nothing  but  gold  and 
silver  to  be  received  at  the  land-offices — a  thing  which  Congress 
had  just  previously  refused  to  direct  by  law ;  and,  although,  in 
the  winter  of  1837,  Congress  passed  a  bill  which  was  intended 
to  rescind  the  circular,  the  President  would  neither  approve  nor 
disapprove  of  it,  and,  as  it  went  to  him  within  the  last  ten  days 
of  the  session,  it  failed  to  become  a  law.  Nearly  every  thing, 
therefore,  in  relation  to  the  revenue  and  the  currency,  had  been, 
from  the  beginning  of  the  late  Administration,  entirely  under  the 
control  of  the  President,  and  that  control  had  resulted  in  bring 
ing  the  country  to  the  situation  in  which  it  now  stood — on  the 
verge  of  a  suspension  of  specie  payments  by  all  its  banks,  in 
cluding  those  which  held  every  dollar  of  the  public  funds. 

In  the  whole  of  that  long  contest,  therefore,  with  the  Ad 
ministration  of  General  Jackson,  Mr.  "Webster  was  engaged  in 
resisting  a  tendency  of  the  Executive  to  absorb  all  political 
power,  and  especially  all  power  over  the  currency ;  and  it  is  be- 


1837.]  DISORDERS  OF  THE   CURRENCY.  559 

cause  of  the  indisputable  existence  of  this  tendency,  springing 
partly  from  the  President's  own  temper,  and  partly  from  the 
new  use  of  the  public  patronage  then  introduced,  that  Mr.  Web 
ster's  opposition  is  to  be  judged.  Certainly,  he  could  have  had 
no  personal  hostility  to  General  Jackson.  Their  personal  inter 
course  had  always  been  mutually  respectful,  and  Mr.  Webster, 
notwithstanding  his  strong  dissent  from  the  President's  meas 
ures,  was  a  guest  at  the  Executive  mansion  probably  as  often 
as  any  public  man  of  the  time  who  was  so  much  occupied.  But 
in  that  enormous  enlargement  of  the  Executive  powers  which 
grew  up  under  President  Jackson,  in  the  control  which  he  exer 
cised  over  a  great  party,  and  in  the  manner  in  which  Congress, 
when  filled  by  a  majority  of  his  friends,  surrendered  its  judg 
ment  to  the  executive  will,  Mr.  "Webster  saw  great  dangers  to  the 
future  stability  of  the  Constitution;  and  it  is  quite  apparent 
now  that,  if  this  had  not  been  an  exceptional  case — if  the  suc 
ceeding  Presidents  had  been  men  of  sufficient  force  to  have 
grasped  and  wielded  the  kind  of  sceptre  that  General  Jackson 
left  to  them  in  the  doctrines  of  executive  power  which  he  main 
tained — we  should  have  had  reason  to  know,  practically,  the 
significance  of  these  warnings. 

Moreover,  this  subject  of  currency  and  public  finance  was 
one  that  Mr.  Webster  well  understood.  He  was  not  wrong 
when,  in  1816,  he  insisted  that  the  public  revenues  must  be 
collected  in  the  bills  of  specie-paying  banks ;  and  that  a  paper 
currency  must  be  secured  by  being  at  all  times  convertible  into 
specie.  He  was  not  wrong,  twenty  years  later,  when  he  said 
that  the  operation  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  combined 
with  the  effect  of  his  specie  resolutions  in  1816,  had  given  us  a 
better  paper  currency  than  any  other  country  had  ever  pos 
sessed.  He  wTas  not  wrong  when  he  maintained,  as  he  always 
did,  that  there  must  be  some  paper  circulation,  and  that  no  man 
of  that  generation  would  ever  see  an  exclusive  gold  and  silver 
currency.  He  was  not  wrong  when  he  foretold  that  the  State 
banks  could  not  perform  the  functions  of  a  national  bank ;  when 
he  said,  after  the  removal  of  the  public  deposits  from  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States,  that  the  exchanges  of  the  country  would 
become  disordered ;  when  he  declared  that  the  distribution  of 
the  public  money  to  new  agents,  selected  upon  principles  of 


560  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 

favoritism,  would  end  in  over-trading  and  extravagant  specula 
tion  ;  when  lie  predicted  that  the  disturbances  in  the  internal 
exchanges  would  tend  to  the  great  increase  of  local  paper  money, 
which  must  be  used  to  take  the  place  of  bills  of  exchange ;  and 
when,  finally,  as  the  last  of  the  Executive  projects  came  into 
operation,  he  pointed  out  the  mischiefs  that  were  to  arise  from 
placing  the  whole  specie  that  was  within  the  country  where  it 
could  have  no  operation  in  strengthening  and  upholding  its 
paper  circulation,  or  be  sent  out  of  the  country  to  restore  the 
balance  of  trade  by  payment  of  its  debts.  Nor  was  he  wrong 
when,  on  the  16th  of  March,  1837,  he  said,  with  caution,  but 
plainly  enough  for  wise  men  to  understand,  that  "  the  worst  is 
not  yet."  In  less  than  three  months  from  that  time,  all  the 
banks  in  the  country  suspended  the  payment  of  their  notes  in 
specie,1  and  an  almost  universal  bankruptcy  overspread  the 
country. 

This  speech  is  also  memorable,  because  Mr.  Webster  availed 
himself  of  this,  the  earliest  moment  after  the  independence  of 
Texas  had  been  formally  recognized  by  our  Government,  to  ex 
press  his  opposition  to  its  annexation  to  the  United  States — an 
opposition  which  he  never  changed  nor  relaxed.  His  reasons 
were  these :  In  the  first  place,  no  necessity  existed  for  extending 
the  limits  of  the  Union  in  that  direction,  and  therefore  the  case 
was  unlike  that  of  Louisiana  or  Florida.  In  the  next  place, 
Texas  was  likely  to  be  a  slaveholding  country,  and  he  held  that 
the  people  of  the  United  States  would  not,  and  certainly  should 
not,  consent  to  add  to  the  Union  a  territory  large  enough  to 
make  several  new  slaveholding  States.  On  this  subject  he  said : 

"  On  the  general  question  of  slavery,  a  great  portion  of  the  community 
is  already  excited.  The  subject  has  not  only  attracted  attention  as  a  ques 
tion  of  politics,  but  it  has  struck  a  far  deeper-toned  chord.  It  has  arrested 
the  religious  feeling  of  the  country ;  it  has  taken  strong  hold  on  the  con 
sciences  of  men.  He  is  a  rash  man,  indeed,  and  little  conversant  -with 
human  nature,  and  especially  has  he  a  very  erroneous  estimate  of  the  char 
acter  of  the  people  of  this  country,  who  supposes  that  a  feeling  of  this 
kind  is  to  be  trifled  with  or  despised.  It  will  assuredly  cause  itself  to  be 
respected.  It  may  be  reasoned  with ;  it  may  be  made  willing,  I  believe  it 
is  entirely  willing,  to  fulfil  all  existing  engagements  and  all  existing  duties, 
to  uphold  and  defend  the  Constitution  as  it  is  established,  with  whatever 

1  The  suspension  began  in  the  city  of  New  York  on  the  10th  of  June. 


1837.]  DANGERS  OF  THE  UNION.  561 

regrets  about  some  provisions  which  it  does  actually  contain.  But  to 
coerce  it  into  silence,  to  endeavor  to  restrain  its  free  expression,  to  seek  to 
compress  and  confine  it,  warm  as  it  is,  and  more  heated  as  such  endeavors 
would  inevitably  render  it — should  this  be  attempted,  I  know  nothing, 
even  in  the  Constitution  or  in  the  Union  itself,  which  would  not  be  en 
dangered  by  the  explosion  which  might  follow." 

At  the  same  time  lie  declared,  in  the  strongest  terms,  that 
all  the  stipulations  found  in  the  Constitution  in  favor  of  the 
slaveholding  States  already  in  the  Union  ought  to  be  fulfilled, 
and,  so  far  as  depended  on  him,  should  be  fulfilled,  "  in  the  ful 
ness  of  their  spirit  and  to  the  exactness  of  their  letter."  Such 
was  the  attitude  taken  by  him  at  the  very  commencement  of 
an  excitement  which  he  forewarned  the  country  was  to  be  at 
tended  by  the  most  serious  consequences — an  attitude  that  is 
most  important  to  be  remembered  by  the  reader,  because  he 
will  have  occasion  to  see  it  again  and  again  repeated,  as  often 
as  Mr.  "Webster  was  called  to  act  upon  this  subject.  In  this 
respect,  it  must  now  be  conceded  that,  of  all  the  statesmen  of 
that  period,  he  looked  farther  into  the  future,  and  comprehended 
more  in  the  range  of  his  vision,  than  any  of  the  public  men  of 
his  time.  The  Southern  statesmen  saw  danger  to  that  institu 
tion  of  their  States  which  had  received  a  qualified  recognition, 
and  some  degree  of  direct  guaranty  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States;  and  they  sought,  by  the  enlargement  of  the 
number  of  slaveholding  States,  to  strengthen  their  political 
power  in  the  Government,  as  a  means  of  defence  against  the 
growing  spirit  of  aggression  which  had  sprung  up  in  the  North. 
But  they  did  not  see  that  no  amount  of  increase  of  their  sec 
tional  power  would  be  of  any  avail  against  a  sentiment  which 
was  taking  its  hold  upon  private  conscience.  They  miscalcu 
lated  the  effect  of  suppression  and  coercion,  as  they  miscalcu 
lated  the  power  of  political  combination  or  governmental  action 
over  the  progress  of  opinion  and  feeling.  The  Northern  states 
men,  too,  who  thought  that  the  Union  could  be  strengthened 
•by  recasting  the  balance  of  power  between  the  non-slaveholding 
and  the  slaveholding  sections,  equally  failed  to  appreciate  the 
fact  that,  after  the  latter  had  been  increased,  the  movement 
itself — however  it  might,  for  a  time,  appear  to  be  successful,  by 
receiving  the  sanction  of  Northern  constituencies — would,  sooner 
37 


562  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXIII. 

or  later,  find  those  constituencies  acting  in  the  opposite  direc 
tion,  by  the  force  which  a  moral  sentiment  always  exerts  over 
the  restraints  of  political  arrangements.  All  this  Mr.  "Webster 
did  see.  The  proof  that  he  saw  it  is  in  the  record  of  what  he 
said,  in  the  warnings  that  he  gave,  and  in  every  one  of  his 
public  acts  relating  to  this  subject,  from  this  year  1837  to  the 
close  of  his  life.  Let  it  be  remembered  that  he  entered  upon 
this  new  era  of  the  Union  with  a  strong  and  clear  conviction 
that  causes  were  at  work  which  were  to  expose  it  to  great  perils ; 
and  let  every  one  of  his  particular  efforts  to  avert  those  perils, 
when  he  could  no  longer  control  the  causes,  be  judged  by  the 
existence  of  this  conviction. 

Mr.  Webster's  purpose  to  make  an  extended  tour  to  the 
West,  in  the  course  of  this  spring  and  summer,  having  become 
known,  Mr.  Clay  addressed  to  him  the  following  cordial  letter, 
in  anticipation  of  his  visit : 

[FROM  MB.  CLAY.] 

"  ASHLAND,  28ta  March,  1837. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  should  like  to  know  at  what  time  we  may  expect 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  in  Kentucky,  as  I  do  not  wish  to  be  absent  on 
that  interesting  occasion.  I  have  no  intention  of  leaving  home  during  the 
spring,  or  before  August,  except  to  make  an  excursion  to  Missouri,  to  visit 
a  young  son  whom  I  have  established  there.  Without  being  bound  to  any 
specific  time  for  this  trip,  I  wish  to  make  it  toward  the  last  of  May ;  but, 
of  course,  shall  be  regulated  by  your  movements,  if  I  can  know  them. 
"  I  am,  truly  and  faithfully, 

"  Your  friend  and  obedient  servant, 

"  H.  CLAY. 
"  The  Hon.  D.  Webster." 

The  journey  was  begun  in  the  early  part  of  May,  and  on 
the  llth  of  that  month  he  was  at  Pittsburg.  Descending  the 
Ohio,  he  was  met  by  a  hundred  citizens  of  "Wheeling,  who  had 
chartered  a  steamboat  to  ascend  the  river  and  escort  him  to  that 
place.  At  the  landing  he  was  greeted  by  an  immense  throng 
of  people,  and,  on  the  17th,  he  accepted  a  public  dinner.  The 
news  of  the  suspension  of  the  Eastern  banks  reached  Wheeling 
on  the  day  of  this  entertainment.  He  had  left  a  scene  of  com 
mercial  distress  in  the  Atlantic  cities,  which,  as  he  described  it 
in  his  speech  at  this  dinner,  presented  a  mass  of  evil  such  as  he 


1837.]  VISIT  TO  THE  WEST.  563 

had  never  expected  to  see,  "  except  as  the  result  of  war,  a  pesti 
lence,  or  some  other  calamity."  He  could  not  have  avoided 
speaking  of  that  which  was  in  all  men's  thoughts,  melancholy 
as  the  topic  was.  Nor  was  there  any  reason  for  avoiding  an 
allusion  to  what  all  men  spoke  of — his  own  early  and  constant 
predictions  of  what  had  now  occurred.  From  the  year  1832 
down  to  the  last  session  of  Congress,  in  every  important  debate, 
he  had  foretold  and  proclaimed  the  approach  of  this  result,  as  a 
necessary  consequence  of  the  measures  adopted  in  regard  to  the 
currency. 

On  the  17th  and  18th  of  May  he  was  at  Maysville,  in  Ken 
tucky,  where  he  had  a  similar  reception,  great  numbers  of  people 
coming  in  from  the  surrounding  country  to  see  and  to  greet 
him.  On  the  19th  he  was  escorted  into  Lexington  by  a  com 
mittee,  chosen  for  the  purpose  at  a  general  meeting  of  the  citi 
zens  ;  and  here  another  public  dinner  was  given  to  him.  At 
Louisville  he  was  received  at  one  of  those  peculiar  entertain 
ments  which  are  known  in  that  country  as  "barbecues,"  at 
which  he  addressed  a  vast  crowd  of  people  in  a  speech  of  two 
hours.  Ascending  the  Ohio  toward  Cincinnati,  he  landed  at 
North  Bend,  and  paid  a  visit  to  General  Harrison.  On  the  2d 
of  June  he  arrived  at  Cincinnati,  amid  a  great  popular  demon 
stration,  and,  on  the  3d,  he  addressed  the  people  of  that  city, 
being  introduced  by  General  Harrison.  On  the  9th,  at  St. 
Louis,  he  was  received  in  a  similar  manner,  and  as  no  other 
man,  according  to  the  newspapers  of  the  time,  ever  was  re 
ceived  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Mississippi.  On  the  14th,  he 
left  St.  Louis  for  Alton,  in  Illinois,  where  his  arrival  was  greeted 
with  a  display  of  flags,  ringing  of  church-bells,  discharge  of 
cannon,  and  a  great  turnout  of  the  population.  The  next  of 
these  demonstrations  was  at  Madison,  Indiana;  and  here  he 
was  obliged,  in  consequence  of  the  state  of  the  country  and  the 
early  meeting  of  Congress,  to  turn  his  course  again  toward  the 
East.  It  would  have  occupied  him  for  at  least  three  months 
longer  to  have  accepted  the  other  invitations  which  poured  in 
upon  him  from  the  great  region  that  is  covered  by  the  States 
of  Illinois,  Indiana,  and  Ohio.  But  to  the  far  greater  part  of » 
all  this  outpouring  of  popular  respect  and  interest  he  could 
only  return  his  grateful  regrets.  From  Madison  he  passed 


564:  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 

through  Indiana  to  Chicago,  where  he  was  met  by  a  cavalcade 
ten  miles  from  the  city,  and  was  followed  by  a  long  train  of 
carriages.  Here  he  addressed  a  vast  crowd  assembled  in  front 
of  the  Lake  House,  and,  on  the  following  day,  a  festival  was 
given  in  his  honor.  On  the  1st  of  July  he  crossed  the  lower 
part  of  Lake  Michigan  to  Michigan  City,  and  passed  thence  to 
Toledo.  On  the  8th  he  reached  Detroit,  from  which  place  he 
arrived  on  the  16th  at  Buffalo,  where,  on  the  17th,  there  was  a 
grand  steamboat  regatta  on  Lake  Erie,  in  honor  of  his  visit. 
On  landing  from  this  excursion,  he  was  escorted  to  the  park, 
and  there  addressed  the  public  in  one  of  his  characteristic 
speeches.  On  the  26th  he  reached  the  city  of  New  York,  on 
his  way  to  Massachusetts. 

Such  is  a  very  imperfect  outline  of  the  last  extended  and 
public  tour  that  Mr.  "Webster  made  to  the  West.  It  might  have 
resembled  the  progress  of  a  supreme  ruler,  if  he  had  not  been 
simply  a  member  of  the  legislative  branch  of  the  Government ; 
for  the  addresses  which  were  presented  to  him,  and  which  are 
now  before  me  in  great  numbers,  many  of  them  coming  from 
quarters  which  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  visit,  almost  always 
proceeded  from  formal  meetings  of  the  citizens,  convened  for 
the  purpose  of  inviting  him,  and  they  mark  the  general  sense 
of  his  public  importance,  while,  with  perfect  freedom,  they  ex 
press  the  gratification  and  delight  to  be  anticipated  from  his 
presence.  It  is  quite  apparent,  from  the  tone  of  these  addresses, 
that,  on  this  tour,  he  exhibited  his  great  social  powers  in  their 
most  attractive  form,  and  that  their  fame  spread  far  and  wide 
through  that  vast  region.  It  was  a  new  experience  in  that 
country  to  see  so  much  refinement  and  intellectual  power,  com 
bined  with  a  fascination  and  cordiality  that  put  everybody  at 
their  ease,  and  yet  lost  nothing  of  personal  dignity.  Western 
society  had  heard  of  Mr.  Webster's  coldness,  and  coldness  is  not 
to  its  taste.  It  found  him,  to  its  surprise  and  delight,  one  of 
the  most  genial  of  men,  capable  of  hearty  enjoyment  in  the 
simplest  pleasures  of  life,  and  feeling  quickly  and  keenly  all 
manifestations  of  sympathy  and  kindness.  On  him,  too,  the 
country  and  its  people  produced  a  very  strong  impression. 

Mr.  Yan  Buren,  who  received  the  administration  of  the  Gov 
ernment  in  March,  1837,  just  as  the  great  crisis  in  the  monetary 


1837.]  PRESIDENT  VAN  BUREN'S  POLICY.  565 

condition  of  the  country,  recently  referred  to,  was  rapidly  de 
veloping  itself,  found  himself  obliged  to  summon  Congress  in 
a  special  session,  to  be  holden  on  the  4th  of  September.  The 
proclamation  issued  for  this  purpose  met  Mr.  "Webster  while  he 
was  on  his  tour  in  the  West.  It  rendered  it  necessary  for  him 
to  shorten  his  journey ;  and,  by  the  time  he  reached  Boston,  he 
had  only  the  month  of  August  remaining  for  rest  and  recrea 
tion  at  Marshfield. 

The  position  of  the  new  President  was  peculiar.  Com 
mitted,  by  the  circumstances  of  his  election,  to  the  policy  of 
his  predecessor,  he  had  to  accept  the  dogma  that  a  national 
bank  was  a  measure  not  to  be  resorted  to  under  any  cir 
cumstances.  At  the  same  time,  nothing  had  been  devised  to 
answer  the  purposes  of  a  substitute  for  such  an  institution. 
The  deposit-bank  system  had  broken  down  entirely ;  and,  in 
the  general  crash  which  came  by  the  suspension  of  specie  pay 
ments,  these  banks,  with  the  public  funds  in  their  custody,  were 
alike  involved.  What  had  been  called,  under  the  former  Ad 
ministration,  the  "  experiment,"  which  had  been  founded  in  the 
expectation  that  the  State  banks  could  transact  the  financial 
business  of  the  Government,  and  furnish  a  generally-accredited 
paper  circulation  for  the  uses  of  commerce,  had  completely 
failed.  The  new  Administration,  therefore,  had  to  strike  out 
for  itself,  and  for  the  country,  a  policy  that  was  destined  to  be 
somewhat  of  a  paradox ;  for  it  was  to  coincide  with  that  of  the 
preceding  Administration,  and  was  yet  to  be  unlike  it.  In  re 
fusing  to  go  back  to  the  policy  of  a  national  bank,  Mr.  Yan 
Buren  could  adhere  to  the  doctrines  and  example  of  General 
Jackson.  But  the  latter  had  never  renounced  the  duty  of  regu 
lating  the  currency.  He  had,  in  fact,  admitted  this  duty,  by 
attempting  to  make  the  deposit  banks  a  substitute  for  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States.  But  the  alternatives  from  which  Mr.  Yan 
Buren  had  now  to  choose  were,  either  to  return  to  the  policy  of 
a  national  bank,  which  had  been  the  policy  of  the  country  for 
forty  years  out  of  the  forty-eight  which  had  elapsed  since  the 
Government  was  established,  or  to  renounce  all  care  of  the  na 
tional  Government  over  the  currency,  excepting  the  coinage, 
and  to  disclaim  all  concern  of  the  Government  in  the  relations 
of  commerce,  of  exchange,  and  of  the  money  which  the  people 


566  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 

must  use  in  their  ordinary  dealings.  This  was  a  difficult  path 
to  tread ;  for  if,  on  the  one  hand,  it  were  to  be  considered  that 
the  peculiar  agency  of  a  national  bank,  as  a  regulator  and  source 
of  a  commercial  currency,  was  out  of  the  question,  still  it  could 
not  be  easily  seen  how  the  Government  was  to  extricate  itself 
from  its  present  embarrassments,  and  accomplish  that  divorce 
from  the  general  concerns  of  the  people,  which  alone  remained 
for  it  to  attempt,  if  no  substitute  could  be  found  to  discharge 
the  functions  that  had  so  long  been  performed  by  a  Bank  of  the 
United  States. 

Difficult,  however,  as  the  enterprise  was,  it  was  undertaken. 
The  new  Administration  decided  to  disclaim  the  duty  of  pro 
viding  a  currency  for  commercial  uses,  or  of  exercising  any  con 
trol  over  the  paper  circulating  medium ;  and  it  is  in  reference 
to  this  new  policy,  which  was  to  confine  the  action  of  the  Gov 
ernment  to  the  care  of  its  own  interests  alone,  and  to  the  mere 
collection  and  disbursement  of  its  revenues,  that  Mr.  Webster's 
opposition  to  Mr.  Yan  Buren's  measures  is  to  be  examined. 
Before  it  could  be  known  what  those  measures  were  to  be,  Mr. 
Webster  had  said  publicly,  while  on  his  tour  in  the  "West,  that 
the  country  had  now  reached  a  point  at  which  a  great  principle 
would  have  to  be  decided:  whether  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  has  any  constitutional  duty  to  perform  in  regard 
to  the  currency  of  the  country,  beyond  the  mere  regulation  of 
the  gold  and  silver  coins. 

On  the  assembling  of  Congress,  the  message  of  the  President 
and  the  report  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  exhibited  the 
deranged  condition  of  the  public  finances,  and  disclosed  the  plan 
of  the  Administration.  For  the  immediate  relief  of  the  Gov 
ernment,  it  was  proposed  to  postpone  the  payment  to  the  States 
of  the  fourth  instalment  of  the  surplus  revenue,  and  to  issue 
some  millions  of  Treasury  notes,  to  be  used  in  paying  the  public 
creditors.  Mr.  Webster  opposed  the  first  of  these  measures  as 
inexpedient,  after  the  States  had  been  led  to  expect  that  the 
money  would  be  distributed  to  them ;  and  he  pointed  out  that 
the  kind  of  Treasury  notes  proposed  to  be  issued,  to  circulate 
on  the  credit  of  the  Government,  without  interest,  and  with  no 
fixed  period  of  redemption,  would  be  mere  paper  money.  For 
the  permanent  plan  of  managing  the  public  finances,  the  mes- 


1837.]  OPINIONS  RESPECTING  THE  CURRENCY.  567 

sage  proposed  that  the  Government  should  no  longer  make  any 
use  whatever  of  banks,  but  that  its  revenues,  after  being  col 
lected,  should  be  held  by  officers  of  the  Treasury,  and  be  paid 
out  by  them  to  the  public  creditors  on  Treasury  orders.  This 
scheme,  which  afterward  became  expanded  into  what  was  known 
as  the  "  Sub-Treasury,"  was  justified  upon  the  ground  that  it 
was  no  part  of  the  duty  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States 
either  to  provide  a  paper  circulating  medium  for  the  uses  of  the 
country,  or  to  supervise  and  regulate  that  which  is  issued  by 
corporations  or  individual  bankers.  A  bill  was  soon  introduced 
into  the  Senate,  in  accordance  with  the  President's  recommen 
dation,  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  out  the  new  plan  of  keeping 
and  disbursing  the  public  moneys ;  and  to  this  bill  Mr.  Calhoun 
moved  an  amendment,  providing  for  the  gradual  repeal  of  the, 
resolution  of  April  30,  1816,  so  far  as  it  authorized  the  receipt 
of  the  notes  of  specie-paying  banks  in  payment  of  public  dues. 
Mr.  Calhoun,  who,  in  1816,  advocated  the  creation  of  the  last 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  and,  during  the  Administration  of 
General  Jackson,  had  been  opposed  to  his  measures,  now  be 
came  a  convert  to  the  doctrine  that  the  Government  has  no 
right  to  have  any  connection  with  banks.  He  regarded  himself 
as  having  formerly  acted  under  the  compulsion  of  necessity,  in 
supporting  a  national  bank ;  and,  now  that  the  connection  be 
tween  the  Government  and  all  banks  was  broken,  he  said  that 
he  was  set  at  liberty  to  act  upon  his  original  opinions.  It  was 
in  consequence  of  this  change  that  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Cal 
houn  came  into  collision  in  the  debate  of  this  session  upon  the 
currency. 

Mr.  Webster's  great  speech  on  this  subject  was  delivered  on 
the  28th  of  September,  in  opposition  to  the  bill  embracing  the 
first .  Sub-Treasury  scheme,  and  to  Mr.  Calhoun's  amendment. 
It  was  the  most  elaborate  of  all  the  arguments  that  he  ever 
made  in  support  of  the  constitutional  duty  of  the  General  Gov 
ernment  to  see  that  a  paper  currency,  of  general  credit,  suitable 
to  the  wants  of  trade  and  business,  as  well  as  to  the  payment 
of  debts  due  to  the  Government,  be  maintained  and  preserved. 
The  capital  sources  of  this  constitutional  argument  were  drawn 
from  the  coinage  power  of  the  Constitution,  the  prohibition  on 
the  States  to  issue  their  own  paper  for  circulation,  and  the 


568  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XX1U. 

power  to  regulate  commerce.  Commencing  with  the  great  ob 
ject  of  the  coinage  power,  to  provide  a  money  for  circulation 
that  should  be,  at  the  same  time,  the  standard  of  value,  Mr. 
"Webster  contended  that  this  power  embraces  authority  to  regu 
late  and  control  any  and  all  paper  which  either  States  or  indi 
viduals  may  put  into  circulation  in  the  place  of  coin.  Passing 
thence  to  the  prohibition  on  the  States  against  issuing  their  own 
paper  for  circulation,  he  said  that  it  had  not  been,  and  now  can 
not  be  held  to  prevent  them  from  authorizing  private  corpora 
tions  or  individuals  to  issue  notes  for  circulation  on  their  own 
credit.  Such  notes  were  and  would  continue  to  be  issued,  and 
they  filled  all  the  channels  of  commerce,  while  they  failed  to  be 
of  universal  credit.  The  power  to  regulate  commerce  here 
t comes  in,  and  is  to  be  applied  to  the  regulation  and  control  of 
whatever,  by  circulating  as  money,  is  in  fact  an  agent  or  instru 
ment  in  the  performance  of  commercial  transactions ;  and  from 
this  power  Mr.  Webster  deduced  the  duty  of  the  General  Gov 
ernment  to  provide  a  currency  of  general  credit,  equivalent  in 
value  to  specie.  Mr.  Calhoun,  who  now  denied  this  whole  doc 
trine,  appears  to  have  anticipated  a  kind  of  Government  paper 
circulation  which  we  have  seen  since  most  extensively  employed. 
While  he  contended  that  the  entire  banking  system  of  modern 
times,  so  far  as  it  involved  the  use  of  Government  credit,  was 
wrong  and  vicious,  he  was  not  able  to  suggest  that  the  Govern 
ment  can  wholly  avoid  the  use  of  its  credit  in  some  form,  or 
rely  exclusively  on  the  coinage.  Credit,  as  the  associate  and 
assistant  of  the  metals,  he  held  to  be  both  unobjectionable  and 
necessary.  But,  in  seeking  the  form  in  which  the  Government 
is  to  use  its  credit,  he  selected  as  "  the  most  stable,  the  least 
liable  to  abuse,  the  cheapest,  and  that  which  combines  all  the 
requisite  qualities  of  a  credit  circulation  in  the  highest  degree," 
a  Government  paper  receivable  in  payment  of  the  revenues,  and 
to  be  issued  as  the  wants  of  the  Government  should  require. 
In  the  event  of  war,  such  a  paper,  he  said,  would  open  almost 
unbounded  resources  to  carry  it  on,  without  the  necessity  of  re 
sorting  to  loans,  which  he  was  almost  disposed  to  regard  as  a 
fraud.  The  increase  of  such  bills  would  keep  pace  with  the 
increase  of  taxes,  and  they  would  furnish  the  means  of  paying 
the  taxes.  Excepting  that  he  did  not  suggest  the  making  of 


1837.]  OPINIONS  RESPECTING  THE  CURRENCY.  569 

this  Government  paper  a  lawful  tender  in  the  payment  of  pri 
vate  debts,  the  form  in  which  Mr.  Calhoun  would  have  used 
Government  credit,  instead  of  using  it  in  connection  with  bank 
ing  institutions,  was  essentially  the  same  scheme  which  we  have 
since  seen  resorted  to  on  a  gigantic  scale ;  and  we  have  thus 
had  some  means  of  judging  how  far  it  can  be  made  "  the  asso 
ciate  and  assistant  of  the  metals,"  and  how  far  it  combines  "  all 
the  requisite  qualities  of  a  credit  circulation." 

The  difference  between  Mr.  "Webster's  financial  system  and 
that  maintained  by  Mr.  Calhoun  as  the  best,  can  now  be  appre 
ciated.  Mr.  Webster  contended  that  it  always  had  been  and 
always  will  be  impossible  to  maintain  any  paper  circulation  at 
par  with  specie  that  is  not  convertible  into  specie  at  the  will  of 
the  holder ;  that  if  Government  is  to  use  its  credit  at  all,  in  aid 
of  the  circulation,  it  must  do  it  in  such  a  form  as  to  make  the 
paper  issues  convertible  at  pleasure  into  coin;  that  its  own 
paper,  issued  without  any  promise  of  redemption  other  than 
that  of  its  being  received  for  taxes,  has  no  advantage  over  that 
issued  by  individuals ;  that  the  modern  banking  system  leads  to 
the  circulation  of  paper  as  money  which  is  founded  on  assigned 
capital  and  recognized  credit,  under  an  administration  of  citi 
zens  responsible,  individually  and  corporately,  to  the  laws.  He 
held  this  system  and  form  of  credit  to  have  been  the  great  in 
strument  which  has  elevated  the  condition  of  society  in  modern 
times,  breaking  down  the  influence  which  dead  capital  confers 
upon  the  few  who  possess  it,  lifting  up  those  who  have  industry 
without  having  capital,  and  extending  the  property  and  business 
of  the  great  mass  of  mankind.  These  principles,  which  he  held 
to  lie  at  the  basis  of  the  relation  in  which  government  stands 
to  society,  in  regard  to  the  circulating  medium,  were,  in  his 
opinion,  those  on  which  the  Government  of  the  United  States 
must  act ;  and  he  maintained,  now  and  always,  that  the  power 
to  carry  out  these  principles  is  in  the  Constitution,  and  that  to 
deny  it  to  be  there  is  to  reconstruct  and  rewrite  the  Constitu 
tion,  to  take  it  away  and  give  us  a  substitute. 

The  bill  to  authorize  the  issue  of  Treasury  notes  was  passed 
at  this  session.  The  bill  to  establish  the  Sub-Treasury  was 
passed  in  the  Senate,  but  did  not  pass  the  House. 

It  was  at  this  period  that  the  first  formal  overture  of  annex- 


570  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIII. 

ation  to  the  United  States  was  made  by  Texas,  which  now  had 
an  independent  government  that  had  been  acknowledged  by  us. 
The  offer  was  declined  by  President  Yan  Buren,  partly  npon 
the  ground  that  it  involved  constitutional  questions  which  it 
would  be  inexpedient  now  to  agitate,  and  partly  because  we 
had  a  treaty  of  amity  and  commerce  with  Mexico,  the  friendly 
purposes  of  which  would  appear  to  be  disregarded  by  enter 
taining  this  proposal.  Mr.  "Webster  had  received  a  great  num 
ber  of  petitions  against  the  annexation  before  the  actual  con 
dition  of  this  negotiation  was  publicly  known.  As  soon,  how 
ever,  as  it  was  known,  he  considered  that  the  time  had  arrived 
when  it  was  proper  for  our  citizens  to  declare  their  sentiments 
on  the  subject,  and  he  accordingly  presented  the  petitions  at 
this  session.1 

1  October  12,  1837. 


1837.]  WESTERN  SPECULATIONS.  571 


CHAPTEE    XXIY. 

1837-1838. 

PROJECT    FOR    A   GREAT  WESTERN"    FARM — SEPARATE    NATIONALITY 

OF    TEXAS SLAVERY  IN    THE    DISTRICT    OF    COLUMBIA THE 

SUB-TREASURY PREEMPTION"    RIGHTS     FOR     SETTLERS     ON"     THE 

PUBLIC   LANDS — THE   COMMONWEALTH    BANK,   IN    BOSTON — COR 
RESPONDENCE. 

ONE  of  the  effects  of  Mr.  Webster's  visit  to  the  West,  in 
the  summer  of  1837,  was  to  confirm  his  desire  for  a 
great  Western  farm,  and  to  lead  him  into  other  land  specula 
tions  and  projects  of  investment  in  that  region.  His  fondness 
for  agriculture,  and  his  knowledge  of  it,  found  in  that  country 
the  scope  which  they  craved ;  for  his  preferences  in  this  re 
spect  were  for  broad  fields  and  large  operations.  He  had  be 
come  the  owner  of  an  extensive  tract,  to  which  he  had  given 
the  name  of  Salisbury,  from  that  of  his  native  town  in  New 
Hampshire.  This  place  is  in  Sangamon  County,  Illinois,  not 
far  from  Springfield ;  on  it  he  had  placed,  as  his  agent,  Mr. 
Nathaniel  Ray  Thomas,  a  younger  son  of  the  family  from 
whom  he  purchased  the  Green  Harbor  estate  at  Marshfield. 
After  his  return  to  Washington,  in  the  winter  and  spring  of 
1838,  he  was  occupied  with  a  project  for  enlarging  this  tract, 
so  as  to  carry  out  a  plan  which  he  had  long  entertained  of 
making  a  Western  farm  of  one  thousand  acres.  There  he 
sometimes  believed  that  he  should  retire  finally  from  profes 
sional  and  public  life ;  sometimes,  that  he  should  make  it  a 
place  of  only  occasional  residence,  in  order  to  indulge  his  love 


572  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIV. 

of  farming  on  a  scale  that  suited  the  grandeur  of  his  tastes,  and 
on  a  soil  such  as  he  could  not  have  in  New  England ;  and 
sometimes  he  imagined  that  a  great  fortune  was  to  be  made 
from  the  increased  value  of  the  property  that  was  to  arise 
out  of  the  further  settlement  of  that  country.  But,  at  this 
period,  he  had  done  nothing  more  than  to  make  contracts  for 
the  enlargement  of  Salisbury,  and  for  stocking  it,  as  it  would 
require  to  be  stocked,  according  to  the  scheme  that  he  had 
planned.  He  was  to  look  for  the  means  of  carrying  out  this 
grand  project  hereafter. 

At  this  session,  another  capital  error  was  committed  on  the 
subject  of  slavery,  and  it  is  extraordinary  that  it  should  have 
been  committed,  and  that  the  Southern  statesmen  should  not 
have  been  content  to  accept  the  conservative  and  consistent 
views  of  Mr.  Webster  as  the  true  ground  on  which  to  rest  the 
rights  and  interests  of  their  States,  instead  of  obliging  him  to 
dissent  from  doctrines  which  it  was  out  of  the  question  for  him 
to  accept.  His  opinions  were  well  known.  He  held  that  Con 
gress  could  do  nothing  in  regard  to  the  institution  of  slavery  in 
any  State ;  but  that,  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  inasmuch  as 
the  jurisdiction  of  Congress  is  plenary,  it  could  deal  with  this 
subject  as  it  might  see  fit,  and  that  this  legislative  power  neces 
sarily  involved  the  right  of  citizens  of  the  United  States  to  peti 
tion  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District,  and  the  duty  of 
Congress  to  receive,  refer,  and  consider  the  petitions.  Never 
theless,  Mr.  Calhoun  now  undertook  to  have  the  Senate  affirm, 
by  resolution,  that  any  act  or  measure  of  Congress,  with  a  view 
to  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  would  be 
a  direct  and  dangerous  attack  on  the  institutions  of  all  the 
slaveholding  States  ;  and  Mr.  Clay  proposed  to  go  further,  and 
declare  that  such  legislation  would  be  a  violation  of  the  faith 
implied  in  the  cessions  of  the  District  by  Yirginia  and  Mary 
land,  a  just  cause  of  alarm  to  the  people  of  the  slaveholding 
States,  and  that  it  would  have  a  direct  and  inevitable  tendency 
to  disturb  and  endanger  the  Union.1  From  this  doctrine,  of 

1  The  following  was  the  fifth  of  the     slavery  in  this  District,  or  any  of  the  Terri- 
resolutions  moved  by  Mr.  Calhoun,  De-    ^^iKSSSS^SffSKSiSSSfSl 

cember  27,  1837  :  any  act  or  measure  of  Congress  with  that 

view,  would  be  a  direct  and  dangerous  attack 

"  Resolved,  That  the  intermeddling  of  any     on  the  institutions  of  all  the  slaveholding 
State  or  States,  or  their  citizens,  to  abolish     States." 


1838.]  THE  SUB-TREASURY.  573 

an  implied  faith  involved  in  the  cessions  of  the  District  as  a 
restraint  upon  the  legislative  power  of  Congress,  Mr.  Webster 
expressed  his  dissent  in  the  most  decided,  but  temperate  terms  ; 
at  the  same  time  saying,  that  whatever  would  stay  the  exercise 
of  the  power  must  be  drawn  from  discretion,  from  reasons  of 
justice  and  true  policy,  and  from  those  high  considerations 
which  ought  to  influence  Congress  in  questions  of  such  extreme 
delicacy  and  importance.1  How  he  regarded  the  effort  of  Mr. 
Calhoun  and  Mr.  Clay  is  apparent  from  the  following  letter  : 

[TO  ME.   KETCHUM.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  January  15,  1838. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  My  speech  on  Mr.  Clay's  resolution  will  appear,  I  hope, 
in  the  Intelligencer  to-morrow.  I  venture  to  say  you  will  be  satisfied  with 
it.  We  are  not  slumbering  here,  but  wish  to  act  with  circumspection  as 
well  as  decision.  I  consider  the  proceedings  of  the  Senate  as  having 
drawn  a  line  which  can  never  be  obliterated. 

"  Mr.  Clay  and  Mr.  Calhoun,  in  my  judgment,  have  attempted  in  1838 
what  they  attempted  in  1833,  to  make  a  new  Constitution. 

"  I  am  engaged  to-day  up  to  the  chin,  in  committee  on  the  new  Sub- 
Treasury,  and  in  court.  To-morrow  I  will  write  you  on  the  Hartford 
Convention,  and  on  the  Tariff  Law  of  1833. 

"  Yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

"We  have  seen  in  the  last  chapter  the  grounds  of  Mr.  "Web 
ster's  dissent  from  the  policy  of  Mr.  Yan  Buren's  Administra 
tion  on  financial  subjects.  It  has  been  sometimes  said,  of  late, 
that  Mr.  Webster's  opposition  to  what  was  called  the  Sub- 
Treasury,  if  not  the  only  error,  was  one  of  the  chief  errors  of 
his  political  life.  This  opinion  is  founded  in  a  superficial  view 
of  his  doctrines  respecting  the  power  and  duties  of  the  General 
Government  in  regard  to  the  currency,  and  in  an  assumed  suc 
cess  of  the  Sub-  Treasury  in  reference  to  things  concerning 
which  it  had  no  success  at  all,  and  which  remained,  as  he  said 

On  the  10th  of  January,  1838,  Mr.  measure  of  Congress,  designed  to  abolish 
Clay  moved  the  following  as  a  substi-  tttS 

States  of  Virginia 


endangering  the  rights  and  security  of  the 
people  of  the  District  ;  and  that  any  act  or 


574  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [Cn.  XXIV. 

they  would  remain,  unprovided  for  by  the  introduction  of  the 
plan  of  a  separate  custody  and  disbursement  of  the  public  funds, 
and  uninfluenced  by  it.  Undoubtedly,  the  plan  of  separate 
custody  and  disbursement  has  operated  beneficially ;  but  it  is 
to  be  remembered  that  its  introduction  and  establishment  were 
accompanied  by  a  denial  of  all  power  and  duty  of  the  General 
Government  to  exercise  any  control  over  the  paper  currency. 
This  is  the  principal  reason  why  Mr.  Webster  reiterated  his 
opposition  to  the  Sub-Treasury  at  the  present  session.  The  dis 
cussions  on  this  subject  led  to  another  encounter  with  Mr. 
Calhoun.1  The  following  note  relates  to  it : 

[TO  MR.    KETCHUM.] 

"  Monday  Morning. 

"  DEAB  SIR  :  I  received  yours  last  evening.  The  speeches  will  go  to  all 
the  printers  this  mail,  and  you  will  get  a  copy  also.  The  reply  to  Mr. 
Calhoun  is  nearly  ready  for  the  press.  It  will  make  a  speech  of  twenty  to 
thirty  pages. 

"  The  speech  will  not  come  quite  up  to  expectation.  It  has  been  too 
much  praised.  If  you  can  believe  it,  no  reporter  took  down  a  single 
word  of  it.  I  had  to  gather  it  together  from  my  own  notes,  my  own 
recollection,  other  friends'  recollections,  and  the  letters  of  the  letter- 
writers. 

"  I  shall  go  to  Boston  the  end  of  this  week  or  early  next ;  must  see 
you  for  an  hour  as  I  go  on,  though  I  shall  make  no  stay,  or  a  very  short 
one,  in  New  York. 

"Yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 

Mr.  "Webster's  visit  to  the  West  had  made  him  acquainted 
with  a  condition  of  the  frontier  settlements  for  which  he  felt 
himself,  on  his  return  to  his  place  in  the  Senate,  bound  to  ex 
tend  some  relief.  In  parts  of  Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Michigan, 
and  especially  in  the  region  beyond  the  Mississippi,  compre 
hended  in  what  was  then  the  Territory  of  Wisconsin,  population 
had  extended  itself  beyond  the  surveys  of  the  public  lands,  and 
the  actual  settlers  were  consequently  without  any  title  to  the 
land  which  they  had  cleared,  and  on  which  they  had  made  im 
provements.  Mr.  Webster  had  satisfied  himself  that  the  cir- 

1  See  the  speeches  on  the  Sub-Treasury,  and  the  reply  to  Mr.  Calhoun,  Works, 
iv.,  401-522. 


1838.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  575 

cumstances  under  which  these  settlements  had  been  made 
afforded  some  palliation  for  the  intrusion  on  the  public  domain, 
and  that  the  practical  question  of  what  was  to  be  done  with 
these  settlers,  their  improvements,  and  the  lands  on  which 
they  were  living,  must  be  met  by  Congress  in  a  spirit  of  liber 
ality.  He  therefore  supported,  against  Mr.  Clay  and  his  own 
colleague  Mr.  Davis,  a  bill  to  grant  a  preemption  right  to  every 
actual  settler  on  the  public  lands,  who  was  in  possession  on  the 
1st  day  of  December,  1837,  with  certain  restrictions  and  limi 
tations.  His  speech  on  this  subject  is  embraced  in  the  fourth 
volume  of  his  "Works. 

Among  the  mischievous  abuses  to  which  the  system  of  de 
positing  the  public  moneys  in  certain  selected  State  banks  had 
led,  under  the  late  Administration,  a  scandalous  occurrence 
took  place  in  Boston,  in  the  payment,  by  the  local  disbursing 
officers  of  the  United  States,  of  pensions  and  fishing-bounties 
in  the  bills  of  a  bank  which  was  on  the  eve  of  failure,  and  the 
result  was  a  total  loss  to  a  most  meritorious  class  of  public 
creditors.  They  were  all  entitled  by  law  to  be  paid  in  specie 
or  in  the  notes  of  specie-paying  banks.  This  disgraceful  affair 
was  brought  before  the  Senate  by  Mr.  "Webster,  on  the  17th  of 
January ;  and  he  made  it  the  occasion  for  pointing  out  that, 
while  the  general  paper  currency  of  the  country  was  left 
depreciated  and  deranged  for  the  want  of  some  regulating 
and  restraining  power,  the  establishment  of  an  exclusive  sys 
tem  of  gold  and  silver  for  Government  use  could  not  secure 
safety  to  the  Government  or  its  creditors ;  for,  in  spite  of 
the  provisions  of  law,  the  disbursing  agents  of  the  Govern 
ment  will  always  be  tempted  to  offer,  and  the  creditors  be 
made  to  accept,  paper  which  passes  for  money  in  the  par 
ticular  locality,  and  which  is  exposed  at  all  times  to  the 
hazard  of  falling  dead  in  the  hands  of  its  holders.  He  held 
the  scheme  of  one  kind  of  currency  for  the  Government  and 
another  for  the  people  to  be  both  impracticable  and  dan 
gerous.1 

The  following  important  letters  may  appropriately  close  the 

1  See  his  remarks  on  the  affair  of  the  officers  and  managers  of  this  bank  were, 
Commonwealth  Bank,  Boston.  Works,  at  the  same  time,  disbursing  agents  for 
iv.,  377,  et  seq.  Some  of  the  leading  the  Government. 


576  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  CH.  XXIV. 

present  volume,  before  we  enter  upon  the  period  in  which  the 
stability  of  the  Union  was  to  be  subjected  to  further  perils, 
that  were  to  demand  of  Mr.  Webster,  to  the  end  of  his  career, 
a  continued  sacrifice  of  his  private  interests  to  the  public 
good : 

[TO  MB.   KETCHUM.] 

"J/ayl2, 1838. 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  This  Cherokee  subject  is  difficult  and  delicate.  The 
public  sympathies  are  aroused  too  late.  The  Whig  members  of  Congress, 
who  have  taken  an  interest  in  seeing  justice  done  to  the  Indians,  are  worn 
out  and  exhausted.  An  Administration  man,  come  from  where  he  will, 
has  no  concern  for  Indian  rights,  so  far  as  I  can  perceive.  We  shall  en 
deavor  to  do  something  or  to  say  something.  We  are  all  willing. 

"  You  think  that  I  ought  to  do  some  act  to  clear  myself  from  the  shame 
and  sin  of  this  treaty.  My  dear  sir,  I  fought  it  a  week  in  the  Senate,  on 
the  question  of  ratification.  We  came  near  preventing  it,  and  should  have 
done  so,  if  we  had  not  been  disappointed  in  Mr.  Goldsborough's  vote.  We 
relied  on  him  as  a  man  of  honor  and  religion ;  but  he  voted  for  the  treaty, 
and  turned  the  scale — mortified  some  of  his  Mends  severely — went  home, 
and  never  returned. 

"  On  all  occasions,  public  and  private,  I  pronounce  the  treaty  a  base 
fraud  on  the  Cherokee  Indians.  What  can  I  do  more  ?  Yet,  I  am  willing 
to  do  more,  if  any  good  can  be  effected  by  it.  ... 

"  Yours, 

"  D.  WEBSTER. 

"  P.  S. — Please  not  to  mention  what  I  have  said  about  the  Cherokee 
Treaty  in  the  Senate,  because  I  do  not  know,  now,  whether  the  injunction 
of  secrecy  was  taken  off.  I  will  look  on  Monday,  and,  if  it  was,  will  send 
you  a  list  of  ayes  and  noes.  I  think  it  was  taken  off,  and  that  the  ayes 
and  noes  have  already  been  published.1 " 

[TO  MR.  PECK.] 

"  Senate-Chamber,  January  11, 1838. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  can  have  no  possible  objection  to  stating  to  you,  in 
any  manner  you  may  desire,  my  opinions  on  the  various  branches  of  this 
great  and  agitating  subject  of  slavery. 

"  In  the  first  place,  I  concur  entirely  in  the  resolution  of  the  House  of 

1  This  letter  refers  to  the  Treaty  of  kees  were  dissatisfied  with  the  treaty, 

New  Echota,  negotiated  in  December,  and  claimed  that  it  was  negotiated  in 

1835,  which  stipulated  for  the  removal  behalf  of  their  nation  by  unauthorized 

of  the  Cherokee  nation  to  the  West ;  persons,  and  was  never  ratified  by  a  re- 

the  removal  to  be  consummated  by  May  spectable  number  of  the  tribe.    It  was  a 

23,  1838.    A  large  portion  of  the  Chero-  most  scandalous  transaction. 


1838.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  577 

Representatives,  passed  as  early  as  March,  1790,  at  a  calm  and  dispassion 
ate  period  in  our  political  history.  That  resolution  is  in  the  following  words : 

" ;  Resolved,  That  Congress  have  no  authority  to  interfere  in  the  eman 
cipation  of  slaves,  or  in  the  treatment  of  them  within  any  of  the  States ;  it 
remaining  with  the  several  States  alone  to  provide  any  regulations  therein 
which  humanity  and  true  policy  may  require.' 

"  In  the  next  place,  I  entertain  no  doubt  whatever  that  Congress  pos 
sessing,  by  the  express  grant  of  the  Constitution,  a  right  to  exercise  ex-, 
elusive  legislation  in  all  cases  whatsoever  over  the  District  of  Columbia,  the 
same  having  been  ceded  by  the  States  of  Maryland  and  Virginia,  and  be 
come  the  seat  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  have  full  authority 
to  regulate  slavery  within  said  District,  or  to  abolish  it  altogether,  when 
ever,  in  their  judgment,  humanity  and  true  policy  may  require  it ;  and 
that  they  have  full  authority  also  to  regulate  or  restrain  the  purchase  and 
sale  of  slaves  within  said  District  in  any  manner  which  they  may  deem 
just  and  expedient. 

"  I  am  also  clearly  and  entirely  of  opinion,  that  neither  by  acts  of 
cession  by  the  States,  nor  by  the  acceptance  by  Congress,  nor  in  any  other 
way,  has  the  faith  of  Congress  become  pledged  to  refrain  from  exercising 
its  constitutional  authority  over  slavery  and  the  slave-trade  in  said  Dis 
trict.  More  than  all,  it  is  my  opinion  '  that  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States  have  an  unquestionable  constitutional  right  to  petition  Congress 
for  the  restraint  or  abolition  of  slavery  and  the  slave-trade  within  the  said 
District ;  and  that  all  such  petitions,  being  respectfully  written,  ought  to 
be  received,  read,  referred,  and  considered  in  the  same  manner  as  petitions 
on  other  important  subjects  are  received,  read,  referred,  and  considered ; 
and  without  reproach  or  rebuke  to  the  authors  or  signers  of  such  petitions.' 

"  The  right  of  petition,  free,  unqualified,  and  untrammelled,  I  hold  to 
be  of  the  very  substance  and  essence  of  civil  liberty.  I  can  have  no  con 
ception  of  a  free  government,  where  the  people,  respectfully  approaching 
those  who  are  elected  to  make  laws  for  them,  and  offering  for  their  con 
sideration  petitions  respecting  any  subject,  over  which  their  constitutional 
power  of  legislation  extends,  may  be  repelled,  and  their  petitions  rejected, 
without  consideration  and  even  without  hearing. 

"  Wherever  there  is  a  constitutional  right  of  petition,  it  seems  to  me  to 
be  quite  clear  that  it  is  the  duty  of  those,  to  whom  petitions  are  addressed, 
to  read  and  consider  them ;  otherwise  the  whole  right  of  petition  is  but  a 
vsjn  illusion  and  mockery. 

"  I  am,  dear  sir,  with  very  true  regard, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 


[TO  MESSRS.  KELLEY  AND   OTHERS,  ERIE,  PENNSYLVANIA.] 

"  WASHINGTON,  June  4, 1838. 

"  GENTLEMEN  :  The  cane  made  from  the  timber  of  the  ship  which  bore 
the  flag  of  the  gallant  Perry  on  the  memorable  10th  of  September,  and 
38 


578  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIY. 

intended  as  a  present  to  me  from  the  citizens  of  Erie,  has  been  delivered 
by  your  townsman,  Mr.  Freeman ;  and  I  have  also  since  had  the  pleasure 
of  receiving  your  letter  intended  to  accompany  the  gift. 

"  To  those  who  have  united  in  this  token  of  confidence  and  friendship, 
I  beg  leave  to  return  my  respectful  and  cordial  thanks.  Be  kind  enough 
to  say  this  to  them,  as  you  may  have  occasion  to  see  them,  and  assure 
them  that  I  highly  value  their  present,  because  of  the  associations  con 
nected  with  its  material,  and  especially  because  it  is  their  present,  and 
because  of  the  inscriptions  which  they  have  seen  fit  it  shall  bear. 

"  You  have  been  kind  enough  to  say,  gentlemen,  that  you  claim  kin 
dred  with  me  as  an  American  citizen. 

"  I  admit  and  reciprocate  this  claim  with  great  pleasure  and  sincerity. 
I  recognize  you  and  your  neighbors  as  fellow-citizens,  my  own  country 
men,  embarked  on  the  same  political  fortunes,  enjoying  the  same  liberty, 
and  the  same  bounties  and  blessings  of  Providence  as  myself. 

"  Your  homes  are  on  the  shores  of  one  of  our  great  inland  seas,  mine  is 
on  the  ocean ;  but  our  substantial  interests,  the  great  elements  of  our  pros 
perity,  and,  above  all,  our  stake  in  that  paramount  treasure  of  a  free  peo 
ple,  a  good  and  wise  government,  are  the  same.  All  these  are  under  the 
protection  and  guardianship  of  that  inestimable  Constitution  which  our 
fathers  framed  and  have  delivered  to  us,  as  a  bond  of  perpetual  union. 

"  It  affords  me,  gentlemen,  much  gratification  to  find  that  my  political 
conduct,  on  trying  occasions,  now  passed,  and  I  hope  passed  forever,  has 
met  your  approbation.  The  period  to  which  you  refer,  you  justly  call  the 
dark  hour.  I  felt  it  to  be  my  duty  in  that  momentous  crisis  to  disregard 
party  and  personal  considerations,  to  act  in  the  true  spirit  of  the  Consti 
tution,  and,  without  forgetting  the  propriety  of  moderation,  or  the  laws 
of  kindness  and  charity,  to  proceed,  nevertheless,  with  a  firm  and  inflexible 
resolution  of  upholding  the  authority  of  the  laws  and  defending  the 
Union.  I  am  happy  to  know  that  in  all  this  I  appear  to  you  to  have  dis 
charged  the  duty  of  a  good  citizen. 

"  I  am,  gentlemen,  your  friend  and  obedient  servant, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

At  this  time  the  affairs  of  Texas  assumed  a  new  aspect,  in 
consequence  of  a  change  in  the  purposes  of  the  leading  persons 
in  that  country,  respecting  its  annexation  to  the  United  States. 
This  change  was  especially  welcome  to  Mr.  Webster,  who  had 
always  desired  to  see  Texas  establish  and  maintain  a  separate 
nationality ;  and  when,  in  consequence  of  negotiations  which 
the  new  minister  of  Texas  opened  with  Mr.  Nicholas  Biddle, 
for  a  loan  to  his  government  of  five  millions  of  dollars,  to  be 
subscribed  in  the  United  States,  that  gentleman  wrote  to  Mr. 
Webster,  to  ask  his  opinion  on  the  whole  subject  of  Texan 


1838.]  CORRESPONDENCE.  579 

independence,  in  its  relations  to  the  United  States — Mr.  Web 
ster,  without  hesitation,  sent  him  the  following  answer : 


[TO  MK.   NICHOLAS  BIDDLE.] 

"  BOSTON,  September  10, 1838. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIE  :  I  have  received  your  favor  of  the  8th  instant.  The 
decision  of  the  Government  of  Texas  to  withdraw  its  application  for  a 
union  with  the  United  States  is,  in  my  judgment,  an  event  eminently 
favorable  to  both"  countries.  She  now  stands  as  an  independent  state, 
looking  to  her  own  power  and  her  own  revenues  to  maintain  her  place 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth ;  an  attitude  vastly  more  respectable  than 
that  which  she  held  when  solicitous  to  surrender  her  own  political  charac 
ter,  and  become  part  of  a  neighboring  country.  Seeking  thus  no  longer  a 
union  with  us,  and  assuming  the  ground  of  entire  independence,  I  think 
it  highly  important  to  the  interest  of  the  United  States  that  Texas  should 
be  found  able  to  maintain  her  position.  Any  connection  with  a  European 
state,  so  close  as  to  make  her  dependent  on  that  state,  or  to  identify  her 
interests  with  the  interests  of  such  state,  I  should  regard  as  greatly  unfor 
tunate  for  us.  I  could  not  but  regret  exceedingly  to  see  any  union  be 
tween  those  parts  of  our  continent  which  have  broken  the  chain  of  Euro 
pean  dependence,  and  the  Governments  of  Europe,  whether  those  from 
which  they  have  been  disunited  or  others.  You  remember  the  strong  opin 
ion  expressed  by  Mr.  Monroe,  that  the  United  States  could  not  consent  to 
the  recolonization  of  those  portions  of  this  continent  which  had  severed 
the  ties  binding  them  to  a  European  connection,  and  formed  free  and 
independent  governments  for  themselves ;  or  to  the  establishment  of  other 
European  colonies  in  America.  The  spirit  and  the  reason  of  this  senti 
ment  would  lead  us  to  regard  with  just  fear,  and  therefore  with  just 
jealousy,  any  connection  between  our  near  American  neighbors  and  the 
powerful  states  of  Europe,  except  those  of  friendly  and  useful  commercial 
intercourse. 

"  It  is  easy  to  foresee  evils,  with  which  any  other  connection  than  that 
last  mentioned,  between  Texas  and  one  of  the  great  sovereignties  of 
Europe,  might  threaten  us.  Not  to  advert  to  those  of  a  high  and  political 
nature,  one  likely  to  have  a  direct  bearing  on  our  commerce  and  pros 
perity  is  very  obvious.  I  mean  the  effect  of  such  a  connection  on  the 
great  staple  of  our  Southern  production.  Texas  is  destined,  doubtless,  to 
be  a  great  cotton-producing  country ;  and,  while  we  should  cheerfully 
concede  to  her  all  the  advantages  which  her  soil  and  climate  afford  to 
her,  in  sustaining  a  competition  with  ourselves,  we  could  not  behold  with 
indifference  a  surrender  by  her  of  her  substantial  independence  for  the 
purchase  of  exclusive  favors  and  privileges  from  the  hands  of  a  European 
government. 

"  The  competency  of  Texas  to  maintain  her  independence  depends,  I 


580  LIFE   OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  [On.  XXIV. 

think,  altogether  on  the  character  of  her  Government  and  its  administra 
tion.  I  have  no  belief  at  all  in  the  power  of  Mexico  to  resubjugate  Texas,  if 
the  latter  country  shall  be  well  governed.  The  same  consideration  decides 
also  the  question  whether  a  loan  to  Texas  would  be  safe.  I  have  supposed 
that  her  new-found  Government  was  gradually  strengthening  and  improv 
ing  in  all  the  qualities  requisite  for  the  respectable  exercise  of  national 
power.  That,  in  institutions  so  recent,  there  should  be  for  a  time  some 
irregularity  of  action,  is  to  be  expected.  But,  if  those,  to  whose  hands  her 
destinies  are  now  committed,  shall  look  steadily  to  two  great  objects — 
first,  real  and  absolute,  as  well  as  nominal  national  independence ;  and, 
second,  the  maintenance  of  a  free  and  efficient  Government,  of  which  good 
faith  shall  be,  from  the  beginning,  a  marked  characteristic — I  see  nothing 
to  render  it  less  safe  to  negotiate  money  transactions  with  her  than  with 
the  governments  of  other  countries.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  spirit  of 
speculation  and  project  should  appear  to  actuate  her  councils,  if  she  should 
trifle  with  her  public  domain,  involve  herself  in  contradictory  obligations, 
or  seek  to  establish  her  prosperity  on  any  other  foundation  than  that  of 
justice  and  good  faith,  there  would  then  be  little  to  be  hoped,  either  in 
regard  to  her  punctuality  in  pecuniary  engagements,  or  to  the  probability 
of  her  maintaining  an  independent  national  character.  My  opinion  on  the 
whole  is,  that  the  prospects  of  Texas  are  now  far  better  and  brighter  than 
they  have  ever  been  before ;  that  the  interest  of  our  own  country  requires 
that  she  should  keep  herself  free  from  all  particular  European  connection  ; 
and  that  whatever  aid  can  be  furnished  to  her  by  individuals  or  corpo 
rations  in  the  United  States,  in  the  present  state  of  her  affairs,  to  enable 
her  to  maintain  a  truly  independent  and  national  character,  would  tend 
to  promote  the  welfare  of  the  United  States  as  well  as  of  Texas  herself. 
"  I  am,  dear  sir,  yours,  with  great  regard, 

"  D.  WEBSTER." 


APPENDIX. 


notes  of  Mr.  Jefferson's  conversation,  referred  to  on 
page  226  of  this  volume,  are  given  by  the  lady  who  wrote 
them,  with  the  following  explanation  : 

"  These  are  notes  about  a  visit  of  three  or  four  days  to  Mr. 
Jefferson,  in  December,  1824.  They  were  written  down,  on  the 
very  evening  on  which  we  left  Monticello,  at  a  little  tavern  kept 
by  a  Mrs.  Clarke,  where  we  stopped  for  the  night,  early  in  the 
afternoon,  because  it  was  the  only  tolerable  inn  within  our  reach. 
We  had  therefore  a  long  winter  evening  before  us,  and  we  got  rid 
of  it  by  making  these  notes,  which  are  here  copied  with  care,  and 
without  a  change  of  any  sort,  from  the  identical  manuscript  in  which 
they  were  originally  recorded,  chiefly  by  Mrs.  Ticknor,  under  the 
dictation  of  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Ticknor.  As  far  as  what  relates 
exclusively  to  Mr.  Jefferson,  his  appearance  and  conversation,  the 
work  is  Mr.  Webster's.  The  rest  was  a  sort  of  joint-stock  contri 
bution." 


BOSTON,  May  1,  1869. 


1ST  O  T  E  S. 


MR.  JEFFERSON  is  now  between  eighty-one  and  eighty-two,  above 
six  feet  high,  of  an  ample  bony  frame,  rather  thin  and  spare.  His 
head,  which  is  not  peculiar  in  its  shape,  is  set  rather  forward  on  his 
shoulders,  and,  his  neck  being  long,  there  is,  when  he  is  conversing 
or  walking,  an  habitual  protrusion  of  it.  His  head  is  still  well 
covered  with  hair,  which,  having  been  once  red,  and  now  turning 
white,  is  of  an  indistinct  light  sandy  color.  His  eyes  are  small,  very 
light,  and  now  neither  brilliant  nor  striking.  His  chin  is  rather  long, 
not  sharp  ;  his  nose  small,  regular  in  its  outline,  with  the  nostrils  a 
little  elevated.  His  mouth  well  formed,  and  still  well  filled  with 
teeth,  generally  strongly  compressed,  bearing  an  expression  of  con- 


582  APPENDIX. 

tentment  and  benevolence.  His  skin,  formerly  light  and  freckled, 
bears  now  the  marks  of  age  and  cutaneous  affections.  His  limbs  are 
uncommonly  long,  and  his  hands  and  feet  very  large,  and  his  wrists 
of  a  most  extraordinary  size.  His  walk  is  not  precise  and  military, 
but  easy  and  swinging ;  he  stoops  a  little,  not  so  much  from  age  as 
from  constitutional  formation.  When  sitting,  he  appears  low,  partly 
from  not  holding  himself  erect,  and  partly  from  the  disproportionate 
length  of  his  limbs.  He  wears,  in  the  house,  a  dark-gray  surtout 
coat,  kerseymere  yellow  waistcoat,  with  an  under  one,  faced  with  a 
dingy  red;  his  pantaloons  are  loose,  very  long,  and  of  the  same 
material  as  his  coat.  His  stockings  are  gray,  and  his  shoes  of  the 
kind  that  bear  his  name.  His  whole  dress  is  not  slovenly,  but 
neglected.  He  wears  a  common  round  hat ;  when  on  horseback  he 
wears  a  gray  strait-bodied  coat,  and  a  long  spencer  of  the  same 
material,  both  fastened  with  large  pearl  buttons.  When  we  first 
met  him  riding,  he  wore  round  his  throat,  in  the  place  of  a  cravat,  a 
knit  white  woollen  tippet ;  and,  to  guard  his  feet,  black  velvet 
gaiters  under  his  pantaloons.  His  general  appearance  indicates  an 
extraordinary  degree  of  health,  vivacity,  and  spirit.  His  sight  is 
still  good,  for  he  needs  glasses  only  in  the  evening ;  his  hearing  is 
but  slightly  impaired,  but  a  number  of  voices  in  animated  conversa 
tion  confounds  it. 


HE  rises  in  the  morning  as  soon  as  he  can  see  the  hands  of  his 
clock,  and  examines  his  thermometer  immediately,  for  he  keeps  a 
regular  meteorological  diary.  Until  breakfast  he  employs  himself 
chiefly  in  writing ;  breakfasts  at  nine.  From  that  time  till  dinner  he 
is  employed  in  his  library,  excepting  that  every  fair  morning  he  rides 
on  horseback  not  less  than  seven  miles,  sometimes  twelve  or  four 
teen.  He  dines  at  four,  retires  to  his  drawing-room  at  six,  passes 
the  succeeding  hours  in  conversation,  and  goes  to  bed  at  nine.  His 
habit  of  retiring  early  is  so  strong,  that  it  has  become  essential  to 
his  health.  His  breakfast  is  made  of  tea,  coffee,  and  bread,  in  all  the 
good  Virginia  varieties,  of  which  he  does  not  seem  afraid,  however 
new  and  warm.  He  enjoys  his  dinner  well,  taking  with  his  animal 
food  a  large  proportion  of  vegetables.  In  regard  to  wines,  he  may 
be  said  to  excel,  both  in  the  knowledge  and  use.  His  preference  is 
for  the  wines  of  the  Continent,  of  which  he  has  many  sorts  of  excel 
lent  quality.  Among  others  we  found  the  following,  which  were 
new  to  us:  L'Ednan,  Muscat,  Samian,  and  Limoux.  His  dinners 
are  in  the  half  Virginian  half  French  style,  in  good  taste,  and 


APPENDIX.  583 

abundant.     Xo  wine  is  served  till  the  doth  is  removed.     Tea  and 
coffee  are  served  in  the  saloon  between  seven  and  eight. 


His  conversation  is  easy  and  natural,  and,  apparently,  not  ambi 
tious  ;  it  is  not  loud,  as  challenging  general  attention,  but  usually 
addressed  to  the  person  next  him.  The  topics,  when  not  selected 
to  suit  the  character  and  feelings  of  his  auditor,  are  those  subjects 
with  which  his  mind  seems  particularly  occupied,  and  these,  at  pres 
ent,  may  be  justly  said  to  be — 1st,  Science  and  letters,  especially 
the  University  of  Virginia  which  is  coming  into  existence,  almost 
entirely  from  his  exertions,  and  will  rise,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  to  useful 
ness  and  credit  under  his  continued  care.  When  we  were  with  him, 
his  favorite  literary  subjects  were  Greek  and  Anglo-Saxon ;  and  2cL 
Historical  recollections  of  the  times  and  events  of  the  Revolution, 
and  of  his  residence  in  France  from  1783-' 84  to  1789. 


MME.  D'HOUDETOT'S  society  was  one  of  the  most  agreeable  in 
Paris  when  I  was  there.  She  had  inherited  the  materials  of  which  it 
was  composed  from  Mme.  de  Tencin  and  Mme,  de  Geoflrin.  St. 
Lambert  was  always  there,  and  it  was  generally  believed  that,  every 
evening,  on  his  return  home,  he  wrote  down  the  substance  of  the 
conversations  he  had  held  there  with  D'Alembert,  Diderot,  and  the 
other  distinguished  persons  who  frequented  her  house.  From  these 
conversations  he  made  his  books. 


the  Baron  de  Grimm  very  well ;  he  was  quite  ugly,  and 
one  of  his  legs  was  considerably  shorter  than  the  other.  But  he  was 
the  most  agreeable  person  in  French  society,  and  his  opinion  was 
always  considered  decisive  in  matters  relating  to  the  theatre  and  to 
painting.  His  persiflage  was  the  keenest  and  most  provoking  I  ever 
knew. 

MME.  XECKZK  was  a  very  sincere  and  excellent  woman,  but  she 
was  not  very  pleasant  in  conversation,  for  she  was  subject  to  what  we 
call  in  Virginia  the  "  Budge ; "  that  is,  she  was  very  nervous  and 
fidgety.  She  could  rarely  remain  long  in  the  same  place,  or  converse 
long  on  the  same  subject,  I  have  known  her  get  up  from  table  five 
or  six  times  in  the  course  of  one  dinner,  and  walk  up  and  down  her 
saloon  to  compose  herself. 


584  APPENDIX. 

PATRICK  HENRY 

WAS  originally  a  bar-keeper ;  he  was  married  very  young,  and,  going 
into  some  business  on  his  own  account,  was  a  bankrupt  before  the 
year  was  out.    When  I  was  about  the  age  of  fifteen,  I  left  the 
school  here  to  go  to  the  college  at  Williamsburgh.     I  stopped  some 
days  at  a  friend's,  in  the  county  of  Louisa.     There  I  first  saw,  and 
became  acquainted  with  Patrick  Henry.    Having  spent  the  Christmas 
holidays  there,  I  proceeded  to  Williamsburgh.     Some  question  arose 
about  my  admission  into  the   college,  my  preparatory  studies   not 
having  been  pursued  in  the  school  connected  with  that  institution. 
This  put  off  my  admission  about  a  fortnight,  at  which  time  Henry 
appeared  in  Williamsburgh,  and  applied  for  a  license  to  practise 
law,  having  commenced  the  study  at  or  subsequent  to  the  time  of 
my  meeting  him  in  Louisa.     There  were  four  examiners — Wythe, 
Pendleton,   Peyton   Randolph,   and   John   Randolph.     Wythe   and 
Pendleton   at  once   rejected  his   application  ;   the   two   Randolphs 
were,  by  his  importunity,  prevailed  upon  to  sign  the  license,  and, 
having  obtained  their  signatures,  he  applied  again  to  Pendleton, 
and,  after  much  entreaty,  and  many  promises  of  future  study,  suc 
ceeded  also  in  obtaining  his.     He  then  turned  out  for  a  practising 
lawyer.    The  first  case  which  brought  him  into  notice  was  a  con 
tested  election,  in  which  he  appeared  as  counsel  before  a  Committee 
of  the  House  of  Burgesses.     His  second  was  the  "  Parsons  cause," 
already  well  known.     These,  and  similar  efforts,  soon  obtained  him 
so  much  reputation  that  he  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Legislature. 
He  was  as  well  suited  to  the  times  as  any  man  ever  was ;  and  it  is 
not  now  easy  to  say  what  we  should  have  done  without  Patrick 
Henry.     He  was  far  before  all  in  maintaining  the  spirit  of  the  Rev 
olution.     His  influence  was  most  extensive  with  the  members  from 
the  Upper  Counties  ;   and  his  boldness  and  their  votes  overawed 
and  controlled  the  more  cool,  or  the  more  timid  aristocratic  gentle 
men  of  the  lower  part  of  the  State.     His  eloquence  was  peculiar,  if 
indeed  it  should  be  called  eloquence,  for  it  was   impressive   and 
sublime  beyond  what  can  be  imagined.    Although  it  was  difficult, 
when  he  had  spoken,  to  tell  what  he  had  said,  yet,  while  speaking, 
it  always  seemed  directly  to  the  point.    When  he  had  spoken  in 
opposition  to  my  opinion,  had  produced  a  great  effect,  and  I  my 
self  had  been  highly  delighted  and  moved,  I  have  asked  myself, 
when  he  ceased,  "  What  the  devil  has  he  said  ? "  and  could  never 
answer  the  inquiry.     His  person  was  of  full  size,  and  his  manner 
and  voice  free   and   manly.      His   utterance  neither  very  fast  nor 


APPENDIX.  585 

very  slow.  His  speeches  generally  short,  from  a  quarter  to  a 
half  hour.  His  pronunciation  was  vulgar  and  vicious,  but  it  was 
forgotten  while  he  was  speaking.  He  was  a  man  of  very  little 
knowledge  of  any  sort.  He  read  nothing,  and  had  no  books.  Re 
turning  one  November  from  Albemarle  Court,  he  borrowed  of  me 
Hume's  Essays  in  two  volumes,  saying  he  should  have  leisure  in 
the  winter  for  some  reading.  In  the  spring  he  returned  them, 
and  declared  he  had  not  been  able  to  go  farther  than  twenty 
or  thirty  pages  in  the  first  volume.  He  wrote  almost  nothing ;  he 
could  not  write.  The  resolutions  of  1775,  which  have  been  ascribed 
to  him,  have  been  by  many  supposed  to  have  been  written  by  Mr. 
Johnson,  who  acted  as  his  second  on  that  occasion.  But,  if  they 
were  written  by  Henry  himself,  they  are  not  such  as  to  prove  any 
power  of  composition.  Neither  in  politics  nor  in  his  profession  was 
he  a  man  of  business ;  he  was  a  man  for  debate  only.  His  biog 
rapher  says :  "  He  read  Plutarch  every  year."  I  doubt  if  he  ever 
read  a  volume  of  it  in  his  life.  His  temper  was  excellent,  and  he 
generally  observed  decorum  in  debate.  On  one  or  two  occasions  I 
have  seen  him  angry ;  his  anger  was  terrible,  and  those  who  had  wit 
nessed  it  were  not  disposed  to  provoke  it  again.  In  his  opinions  he 
was  yielding  and  practicable,  and  not  disposed  to  differ  from  his 
friends.  In  private  conversation  he  was  agreeable  and  facetious,  and, 
while  in  genteel  society,  seemed  to  understand  all  the  decencies  and 
proprieties  of  it ;  but  in  his  heart  he  preferred  low  society,  and  sought 
it  as  often  as  possible. 

He  would  hunt  in  the  pine- woods  of  Fluvanna  with  overseers, 
and  persons  of  that  description,  living  in  a  camp  for  a  fortnight  at  a 
time,  without  a  change  of  raiment.  I  have  been  often  astonished  at 
his  command  of  proper  language  ;  how  he  obtained  the  knowledge  of 
it  I  never  could  find  out,  as  he  read  little,  and  conversed  little  with 
educated  men. 

After  all,  it  must  be  allowed  that  he  was  our  leader  in  the  meas 
ures  of  the  Revolution  in  Virginia,  and  in  that  respect  more  is  due  to 
him  than  to  any  other  person.  If  we  had  not  had  Mm,  we  should 
probably  have  got  on  pretty  well,  as  you  did,  by  a  number  of  men 
of  nearly  equal  talents ;  but  he  left  all  of  us  far  behind.  His  biog 
rapher  communicated  the  sheets  of  his  work  [to  me],  as  they  were 
printed,  and,  at  the  end,  asked  for  my  opinion.  I  told  him  it  would 
be  a  question  hereafter,  whether  his  work  belonged  to  the  shelf  of 
history,  or  of  panegyric.  It  is  a  poor  book,  written  in  bad  taste,  and 
gives  an  imperfect  idea  of  Patrick  Henry.  It  seems  written  less  to 
show  Mr.  Henry  than  Mr.  Wirt. 


586  APPENDIX. 

BUFFON. 

WHEN  I  was  in  France,  the  Marquis  de  Chastellux  carried  me  to 
Buffon's  residence  in  the  country,  and  introduced  me  to  him.  It  was 
Buffon's  practice  to  remain  in  his  study  until  dinner-time,  and  receive 
no  visitors  under  any  pretence ;  but  his  house  was  open,  and  his 
grounds,  and  a  servant  showed  them  very  civilly,  and  invited  all,  stran 
gers  and  friends,  to  remain  and  dine.  We  saw  Buffon  in  the  garden, 
but  carefully  avoided  him ;  but  we  dined  with  him,  and  he  proved 
himself  then,  as  he  always  did,  a  man  of  extraordinary  powers  in'  con 
versation.  He  did  not  declaim ;  he  was  singularly  agreeable.  I  was 
introduced  to  him  as  Mr.  Jefferson,  who,  in  some  notes  on  Virginia, 
had  combated  some  of  his  opinions.  Instead  of  entering  into  an  ar 
gument,  he  took  down  his  last  work,  presented  it  to  me,  and  said, 
"  When  Mr.  Jefferson  shall  have  read  this,  he  will  be  perfectly  satis 
fied  that  I  am  right."  Being  about  to  embark  from  Philadelphia 
for  France,  I  had  observed  an  uncommonly  large  skin  of  a  panther,  at 
the  door  of  a  hatter's  shop.  I  bought  it  for  half  a  Jo x  on  the  spot, 
determining  to  carry  it  to  Europe,  to  convince  M.  Buffon  of  his  mis 
take  in  relation  to  this  animal,  which  he  had  confounded  with  the 
cougar.  I  sent  him  the  skin,  with  a  note.  He  acknowledged  his 
mistake,  and  said  he  would  correct  it  in  his  next  volume.  I  at 
tempted  also  to  convince  him  of  his  error  in  relation  to  the  common 
deer  and  the  moose  of  America,  he  having  confounded  our  deer  with 
the  red  deer  of  Europe,  and  our  moose  with  the  reindeer.  I  told  him 
our  deer  had  horns  two  feet  long ;  he  replied,  with  warmth,  that  if  I 
could  produce  a  single  specimen  with  horns  one  foot  long,  he  would 
give  up  the  question.  Upon  this  I  wrote  to  Virginia  for  the  horns 
of  one  of  our  deer,  and  obtained  a  very  good  specimen,  four  feet 
long.  I.  told  him,  also,  that  the  reindeer  could  walk  under  the  belly 
of  our  moose,  but  he  entirely  scouted  the  suggestion.  Whereupon, 
I  wrote  to  General  Sullivan,  of  New  Hampshire,  and  desired  him  to 
send  me  the  bones,  skin,  and  antlers  of  a  moose,  supposing  they  could 
easily  be  obtained  by  him.  Six  months  afterward,  my  agent  in  Eng 
land  advised  me  that  General  Sullivan  had  drawn  on  him  for  forty 
guineas.  I  had  forgotten  my  request,  and  wondered  why  such  a 
draught  had  been  made,  but  I  paid  it  at  once.  A  little  later,  came 
a  letter  from  General  Sullivan,  setting  forth  the  manner  in  which  he 
had  complied  with  my  request ;  that  he  had  been  obliged  to  raise 
a  company  of  nearly  twenty  men ;  had  made  an  excursion  toward 
the  White  Hills,  camping  out  many  nights ;  and  had  at  last,  after 
1  Jo  is  a  Portuguese  coin  of  eight  dollars,  common  in  this  country  at  one  period. 


APPENDIX.  587 

many  difficulties,  caught  my  moose,  boiled  his  bones  in  the  desert, 
stuffed  his  skin,  and  remitted  him  to  me,  horns  and  all.  This  ac 
counted  for  my  debt,  and  convinced  M.  Buffon.  He  promised,  in  his 
next  volume,  to  set  these  things  right  also;  but  he  died  directly 
afterward. 

THE  VIRGINIA  FAST. 

ABOUT  the  time  of  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  the  patriotic  feeling  in 
Virginia  had  become  languid  and  worn  out,  from  some  cause  or  other. 
It  was  thought  by  some  of  us  to  be  absolutely  necessary  to  excite 
the  people ;  but  we  hardly  knew  the  best  means.  At  length  it  oc 
curred  to  us  to  make  grave  faces,  and  have  a  fast.  Some  of  us,  who 
were  younger  members  of  the  Assembly,  resolved  upon  the  measure. 
We  thought  Oliver  Cromwell  would  be  a  good  guide  in  such  a  case. 
We  accordingly  looked  into  Rushworth,  and  drew  up  our  resolutions, 
after  the  most  pious  and  praiseworthy  examples.  It  would  hardly 
have  been  in  character  for  us  to  present  them  ourselves.  We  applied, 
therefore,  to  Mr.  Nicholas,  a  grave  and  religious  man.  He  proposed 
them  in  a  set  and  solemn  speech.  Some  of  us  gravely  seconded  him, 
and  the  resolutions  were  passed  unanimously.  If  any  debate  had 
occurred,  or  if  they  had  been  postponed  for  consideration,  there  is  no 
chance  that  they  would  have  passed.  The  next  morning  Lord  Botte- 
tourt,  the  Governor,  summoned  the  Assembly  to  his  presence,  and 
said  to  them,  "  I  have  heard  of  your  proceedings  of  yesterday,  and 
augur  ill  of  their  effects.  His  Majesty's  interests  require  that  you  be 
dissolved,  and  you  are  dissolved."  Another  election  soon  afterward 
taking  place,  such  was  the  spirit  of  the  times,  that  every  member  of 
the  Assembly,  without  an  individual  exception,  was  reflected. 

Lord  Bottetourt  was  an  honorable  man.  His  government  had 
authorized  him  to  make  certain  assurances  to  the  people  here,  which 
he  made  accordingly.  He  wrote  to  the  Minister  that  he  had  made 
those  assurances,  and  that,  unless  he  should  be  enabled  to  fulfil  them, 
he  must  retire  from  his  situation.  This  letter  he  sent  unsealed  to 
Peyton  Randolph,  for  his  inspection.  Lord  B.'s  great  respectability, 
his  character  for  integrity,  and  his  general  popularity,  would  have 
enabled  him  exceedingly  to  embarrass  the  measures  of  the  patriots. 
His  death  was  therefore  a  fortunate  event  for  the  cause  of  the  Revo 
lution.  He  was  the  first  Governor-in-Chief  that  had  ever  come  over 
to  Virginia.  Before  his  time,  we  had  received  only  Deputies,  the 
Governor  residing  in  England,  with  a  salary  of  £5,000,  and  paying 
his  Deputy  £1,000. 


588  APPENDIX. 

Our  fast  produced  very  considerable  effects.  We  all  agreed  to 
go  home,  and  see  that  preachers  were  provided  in  our  counties,  and 
notice  given  to  the  people.  I  came  to  this  county,  and  notified  the 
people,  who  wondered  what  it  meant,  and  came  together  in  multi 
tudes.  I  took  care  to  provide  a  preacher  for  the  occasion. 

(In  reply  to  a  question  of  Mr.  Webster.) 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  written  in  a  house  on  the 
north  side  of  Chestnut  Street,  between  Third  and  Fourth — not  a  cor 
ner  house.  Heiskell's  Tavern,  in  Fourth  street,  has  been  shown  for 
it — (to  Mr.  Webster) — but  this  is  not  the  house. 

When  Congress  met,  P.  Henry  and  R.  H.  Lee  opened  the  gen 
eral  subject  with  great  ability  and  eloquence — so  much  so  that  Paca 
and  Chase,  delegates  from  Maryland,  said  to  each  other,  as  they  re 
turned  from  the  House,  "  We  shall  not  be  wanted  here ;  those  gen 
tlemen  from  Virginia  will  be  able  to  do  every  thing  without  us."  But 
neither  Henry  nor  Lee  was  a  man  of  business,  and,  having  made 
strong  and  eloquent  general  speeches,  they  had  done  all  they  could. 
It  was  thought  advisable  that  two  papers  should  be  drawn  up,  one, 
an  address  to  the  people  of  England,  and  the  other  an  address,  I 
think,  to  the  King.  Committees  were  raised  for  these  purposes,  and 
Henry  was  at  the  head  of  the  first,  and  Lee  of  the  second.  When 
the  Address  to  the  people  of  England  was  reported,  Congress  heard 
it  with  utter  amazement.  It  was  miserably  written,  and  good  for 
nothing.  At  length,  Governor  Livingston,  of  New  Jersey,  ventured 
to  break  silence.  After  complimenting  the  author,  he  said  he  thought 
some  other  ideas  might  be  usefully  added  to  his  draft  of  an  address. 
Some  such  paper  had  been  for  a  considerable  time  contemplated,  and 
he  believed  a  friend  of  his  had  tried  his  hand  in  the  composition  of 
one.  He  thought,  if  the  subject  were  again  committed,  some  im 
provement  in  the  present  draft  might  be  made.  It  was  accordingly 
recommitted,  and  the  address,  which  had  been  alluded  to  by  Governor 
Livingston,  and  which  was  written  by  John  Jay,  was  reported  by  the 
committee,  and  adopted  as  it  now  appears.  It  is,  in  my  opinion,  one 
of  the  very  best  State  papers  which  the  Revolution  produced. 


FOR  depth  of  purpose,  zeal,  and  sagacity,  no  man  in  Congress  ex 
ceeded,  if  any  equalled,  Sam  Adams ;  and  none  did  more  than  he  to 
originate  and  sustain  revolutionary  measures  in  Congress.  But  he 
could  not  speak.  He  had  a  hesitating,  grunting  manner. 


APPENDIX.  589 

John  Adams  was  our  Colossus  on  the  floor.  He  was  not  grace 
ful  nor  elegant,  nor  remarkably  fluent,  but  he  came  out  occasionally 
with  a  power  of  thought  and  expression,  that  moved  us  from  our  seats. 


THROUGHOUT  the  whole  Revolution,  Virginia  and  the  four  New- 
England  States  acted  together.  Indeed,  they  made  the  Revolution. 
They  made  five  votes  always  to  be  counted  on,  and  they  had  to  pick 
up  the  remaining  two  for  a  majority,  when  and  where  they  could. 


RICHARD  H.  LEE  moved  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  in  pur 
suance  of  the  resolutions  of  the  Assembly  of  Virginia,  and  only  be 
cause  he  was  the  oldest  member  of  the  Virginia  delegation. 


I  FEEL  much  alarmed  at  the  prospect  of  seeing  General  Jackson 
President.  He  is  one  of  the  most  unfit  men  I  know  of  for  such  a 
place.  He  has  had  very  little  respect  for  laws  or  constitutions,  and 
is,  in  fact,  merely  an  able  military  chief.  His  passions  are  terrible. 
When  I  was  President  of  the  Senate,  he  was  a  Senator,  and  he  could 
never  speak,  from  the  rashness  of  his  feelings.  I  have  seen  him  at 
tempt  it  repeatedly,  and  choke  with  rage.  His  passions  are,  no 
doubt,  cooler  now ;  he  has  been  much  tried  since  I  knew  him,  but  he 
is  a  dangerous  man.1 

MARMONTEL  was  a  very  amusing  man.  He  dined  with  me,  for  a 
long  time,  every  Thursday,  and  I  think  told  some  of  the  most  agree 
able  stories  I  ever  heard  in  my  life.  After  his  death,  I  found  almost 
all  of  them  in  his  memoirs,  and  I  dare  say  he  told  them  so  well  be 
cause  he  had  written  them  out  before  it,  for  this  very  book. 


I  WISH  Mr.  Pickering  would  make  a  radical  Lexicon.  It  would 
do  more  than  any  thing  else,  in  the  present  state  of  the  matter,  to 
promote  the  study  of  Greek  among  us.  Jones's  Greek  Lexicon  is  very 
poor ;  I  have  been  much  disappointed  in  it.  The  best  I  have  ever 
used  is  the  Greek  and  French  one  by  Planche. 

1  At  the  time  of  these  conversations,  and  Mr.  Jefferson  favored  the  claims  of 
the  Presidential  election  was  pending,  Mr.  Crawford. 

END   OF  VOLUME   I. 


THE  NEW  AMERICAN  CYCLOPAEDIA. 

D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY, 

90,  98  &  94  GRAND  ST.,  NEW  YORK. 
HAVE  HOW  READY, 

THE  NEW  AMERICAN  CYCLOPEDIA. 

A  POPULAR  DICTIONARY  OF  GENERAL  KNOWLEDGE. 

Edited  by  GEORGE  RIPLET  and  CHARLES  A.  DANA, 

AIDED    BY    A    NUMEROUS  SELECT    CORPS    OP    WRITERS,     IN    ALL    BRANCHES   OP  SCIENCE,   ART, 

AND  LITERATURE. 

In  Sixteen  large  volumes,  8vo.    750  doable-column  pages  in  each  volume. 


"  The  leading  claims  to  public  consideration  which  the  New  American  Cyclopaedia  pos 
sesses  may  be  thus  briefly  stated : 

"  1.  It  surpasses  all  other  works  in  the  fulness  and  ability  of  the  articles  relating  to 
the  United  States. 

"  2.  No  other  work  contains  so  many  reliable  biographies  of  the  leading  men  of 
this  and  other  nations.  In  this  resptct  it  is  far  superior  even  to  the  more  bulky  Encyclo 
pedia  Britannica. 

"  3.  The  best  minds  in  this  country  have  been  employed  in  enriching  its  pages  with 
the  latest  data,  and  the  most  recent  discoveries  in  every  branch  of  manufactures,  mechan- 
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"  4.  It  is  a  library  in  itself,  where  every  topic  is  treated,  and  where  information  can  be 
gleaned  which  will  enable  a  student,  if  he  is  so  disposed,  to  consult  other  authorities, 
thus  affording  him  an  invaluable  key  to  knowledge. 

"  5.  It  is  neatly  printed,  with  readable  type,  on  good  paper,  and  contains  a  most  copious 
index. 

"  6.  It  is  the  only  work  which  gives  any  thing  approaching  correct  descriptions  of  cities 
and  towns  of  America,  or  embraces  reliable  statistics  showing  the  wonderful  growth  of  all 
sections." 

Front  the  New  York  Times. 

"  It  is  a  work  written  by  Americans  for  Americans.  It  proffers  them  the  knowledge 
they  most  require,  selected  and  arranged  by  those  who  are  competent  to  the  task,  because 
they  themselves  had  experienced  the  want  they  now  endeavor  to  supply.  It  is  minute  on 
points  of  general  interest,  and  condensed  in  those  of  more  partial  application.  Its  infor 
mation  is  the  latest  extant,  and  in  advance  of  any  other  book  of  reference  in  the  world. 
The  best  talent  in  the  country  has  been  engaged  in  its  production." 

From  the  North  American  Review. 

"  There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  at  least  for  the  use  of  American  readers,  and  in  some 
respects  wherever  the  English  language  is  spoken,  the  Cyclopaedia  will  greatly  surpass,  in 
its  value  as  — ' — 1- *—«-  •»  •••  •••  -*.  «-__  ___i  »..-  j  —  ~:».i — 

side  of  the 


its  value  as  a  reference  book,  any  similar  compilation  that  has  yet  been  issued  on  either 

n;r4/i    /vf  +Vin     Arl.inf:n» 


PRICE  OF  THE  WORK,  PER  VOLUME  : 

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AN     I  M  P  O  R  T  A  NT     WORK. 

THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  NAVY 

DURING  THE  REBELLION. 

£Y    THE    REV.    CHAS.   B.    BOYNTON,   D.    D., 

Professor  at  the  U.  S.  Naval  Academy,  and  Chaplain,  of  the 
Souse  of  Representatives. 

VOLUME  I.  NOW  READY. 

WITH     NUMEROUS 


To  be  complete  in  two  elegant  octavo  volumes  of  about  five  hundred  pages  each, 
embellished  and  illustrated  with  some  ten  full-page  Engravings  in  chromo  tints,  and  with 
the  same  number  of  full-page  Woodcuts,  Portraits  on  Steel  of  Distinguished  Officers, 
and  numerous  Vignettes  from  Sketches  made  by  Commander  M.  B.  WOOLSEY,  U.  S.  Navy, 
and  with  numerous  maps  and  charts  from  government  surveys  and  official  plans,  furnished 
for  this  work  exclusively. 

No  purely  fancy  sketches  find  a  place  in  the  work,  but  all  the  engravings  represent 
actual  scenes  and  objects  of  interest,  and  will  thus  have  an  historical  bearing  and  impor 
tance,  while  they  are  executed  in  the  highest  style  of  the  engraver's  art,  making  in  every 
way  an  invaluable  acquisition  to  the  work,  and  not  mere  embellishments. 

Among  the  objects  of  great  interest  represented  are  the  following : 

THE  VARIOUS  NEW  FORMS  OF  ORDNANCE,  AND  THE  TYPE-SHIPS  OF  OUR  NAVY; 
so  arranged  as  to  show  the  wonderful  progress  made  in  Naval  Warfare  since  the  breaking  out 
of  the  Rebellion. 

THE  HARBOR   AND    RIVER    OBSTRUCTIONS. 

THE  TORPEDOES  IN  VARIOUS  FORMS  used  by  the  Rebels  for  the  destruction  of  our  Vessels 
REBEL  CASEMATES  Destroyed  by  U.  S.  Gunboats  "  Baron  de  Kalb"  and  "  Louisville." 
THE  DAM   MADE  ACROSS  THE  RED  RIVER  to  Release  the  Fleet  of  Admiral  Porter. 
FORT  MORGAN;  showing  from  actual  measurement  the   place  where  every  shot  and  shell  struck 
and  the  effect  of  each. 

Every  desired  facility  has  been  extended  Dr.  BOYNTON  by  the  Navy  Department  for 
obtaining  information  from  original  and  reliable  sources,  as  will  appear  from  the  following 
letter  from  Secretary  WELLES  : 

NAVY  DEPARTMENT,  Washington,  9th  Dec.,  1865. 
Rev.  C.  B.  BOYNTON,  D.  D. : — 

Dear  Sir  : — I  have  been  made  acquainted  to  some  extent  with  the  plan  of  your  pro 
posed  History  of  the  Rebellion,  with  special  reference  to  the  part  taken  by  the  Navy  in 
suppressing  it,  and  with  pleasure  give  you  access  to  the  official  papers  and  records  of  the 
Department,  so  far  as  it  is  proper  to  make  public  use  of  them.  The  fullest  opportunity 
will  be  afforded  you  to  gather  information  from  original  sources,  as  well  as  to  verify  such 
facts  as  have  already  been  published.  '  Very  respectfully, 

GIDEON  WELLES,  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 

The  author  has  undertaken  the  work  in  the  earnest  hope  that  it  may  aid  in  setting  the 
work  of  the  Navy  in  its  true  light  before  the  public, — to  show  the  people  how  much  the 
country  is  indebted  for  its  triumph  and  present  security  to  those  who  organized  and 
directed  the  operations  of  the  Navy,  and  to  those  who  so  successfully  guarded  our  long 
coast-line  and  communications,  and  fought  our  battles  upon  the  rivers  and  on  the  sea.  It 
is  printed  on  beautiful  paper,  of  excellent  quality,  in  large,  clear  type,  and  handsomely 
bound  ifc  various  styles. 

PRICE  OP  THE  WORK. — In  extra  cloth,  per  vol.,  $5.00 ;  in  library  leather,  per  vol.,  $6.00 , 

in  half  turkey  morocco,  per  vol.,  $7.50. 
AgentB  wanted  In  all  parts  of  the  country,  to  whom  exclusive  territory  will  be  given. 

D.  APPLETON   &  CO.,  Publishers, 

9O,  92  &  94  Grand  Street,  New  YorJc. 


1MIJ    DV/WIV 


STAMPED  BELOW 


RENEWED  BOOKS  ARE  SUBJECT  TO  IMMEDIATE 
RECALL 


DEC •!!  586 

JAN  12  1966 
RET-  JAN  1 1  1 

DEC  1  6  1966 

A_ 


.  fMR  1 6  1967 


LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

Book  Slip-50m-12,'64(F772s4)458 


355876 

E3UO 
Curtis,   G,T.  Wl* 

Life  of  Daniel        C92 
Webster.  v.l 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF   CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


